AND SO IT’S over for another year. 

Where once complaints over the Irish government’s ministerial missions to far-flung lands focused on the cost of the collective jaunt, these days the criticisms are a little bit more specific.

With the United States engaged in a deranged war in Iran, fuelling a genocide in Palestine, openly aggressing for regime change in South and Central American countries, and intermittently threatening Europe’s territorial and economic sovereignty, some are asking: ‘Might there be a chance that playing along with these people is wrong, stupid, or maybe even wrong and stupid?’

There appears to be nobody less troubled by this question than Taoiseach Micheál Martin who, for the second year running, handed that embarrassing bowl of shamrocks to Donald Trump — presumably after coating it with some kind of adhesive to prevent it from slipping out of the US president’s blood-slicked hands. 

While Big Bird was doing wheelies around Rush on his tiny quad bike, in the true spirit of St Patrick’s Day, the Fianna Fáil leader once again sought to cement Ireland’s status as an ally of a country that, a matter of weeks ago, blew up a primary school full of Iranian children. And by the unbelievably low standards to which we all now apparently subscribe, it went tremendously well. 

At breakfast with the Taoiseach, JD Vance once again broke out his shamrock socks, paying respect to that universally recognised symbol of our country. Somehow, these socks have become the sort of Punxsutawney Phil for whether or not we’re about to be ambushed. If Vance is wearing the shamrock socks, then Martin’s not getting the Zelenskyy treatment. Alas, socks with American symbols — such as innocent people illegally detained by ICE or bombs being dropped on civilians in the Middle East — are harder to come by, so Micheál Martin could not return the gesture and simply wore regular ones. 

But of course, what we were all waiting for was Martin’s appearance in the Oval Office, to see whether the Taoiseach would rise to the occasion and push back against any of the abominable things about the current United States administration.

The Taoiseach sat silently while Donald Trump responded to a question about Catherine Connolly’s criticism of his war in Iran by misgendering her, saying, “He’s lucky I exist,” whatever that was supposed to mean. In what was the most obsequious moment of the meeting, Martin said: “We have to continue to work to see can we bring peace, a different regime to Iran, where Iranians can live in peace again, and the people in the Middle East can live in peace, and you’re doing your bit there.”

Now, to those of us uninitiated in the ways of sensible realpolitik centrism, it would seem that bombing Iranian children is doing your bit for peace in the Middle East in much the same way Oliver Cromwell was doing his bit for peace in Ireland by sacking Drogheda.  

Micheál Martin’s contribution to the press conference was minimal, which is probably what he was going for, and perhaps by emerging unscathed, it could be said that he did a good job. However, if you jumped into a pit with a baboon, tried to convince it to have tea with you for 40 minutes, sat nodding sagely at its baboon remarks the whole time before taking your leave, people wouldn’t say ‘Well done navigating that baboon situation’, they would say ‘Why do you do that every March 17th?’ 

What we are witnessing is the utter obliteration of standards in real time. 

One column in the Irish Independent rendered a rather glowing verdict, in a column headlined: ‘Inside the Oval Office cauldron with Trump, where Micheál Martin came out with self-respect intact’. “Just as he did last year, the Taoiseach allowed Trump to steal the show,” it reads. Allowed it, did he? As though at any moment, Micheál Martin could have held his hand up and brought Trump to heel. 

Ahead of the meeting, an Irish Times column similarly backed this approach and rebuked President Catherine Connolly for her suggestion that the government leadership should openly criticise the US and Israel’s bombing campaign in Iran. 

To accept that this was a job well done, however, we implicitly accept that it is of no consequence that the President of the United States is entirely disengaged and uninterested in who the Irish president might be. That acknowledging his unending litany of violent and repressive offences across the world is somehow secondary to maintaining our quiet dignity. That, deep down, nothing really matters.

One of the only times that Martin roused himself to speak in opposition to Trump was to defend not the Irish president or the Irish people but UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Martin even found his way to describing Winston Churchill as a “great wartime leader”, while also acknowledging that Churchill “created his own bit of difficulties for us”. Which is funny, because using Martin’s earlier metric, surely it would be more accurate to say that Winston Churchill ‘did his bit for peace’ in Ireland, no?

In the credit column, it is worth pointing out that the Taoiseach did push back on Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric, especially as it pertains to Europe. In particular, with the pointed remark that Europe is “characterised wrongly in terms of it being overrun”, a favourite talking point of Trump’s. 

If this is escaping with your dignity, that’s only because dignity ain’t what it used to be. The only way you could argue that Micheál Martin left the Oval Office with his ‘self-respect intact’ is to implicitly presuppose that our collective self-respect in the western world has already been shredded down so badly that you could use it as St Patrick’s Day parade confetti.

If there was any real comic relief to be found in this year’s visit, it was Donald Trump’s suggestion of what he called a ‘merger’ between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, forcing Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly of the DUP to dismiss the remarks as ‘banter’, Richard Keys-style. Maybe we should all be grateful that Trump continues to know nothing about Ireland. God help us if he ever takes a real interest.

And while we celebrated back home, it became clear that the real solution to the DC quandary was under our noses the entire time. 

We spent so long speculating as to the perfect place for the 14-foot pint-wielding St Patrick when really this was always a two-birds, one-stone situation. We should have sent him in to meet President Trump and claimed he was the Taoiseach. Maybe pre-programmed him to speak in a deep, booming voice and say something like “YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR WAYS”. 

You can practically hear Donald Trump’s verdict. “Earlier, I met the Taoiseach of Ireland. He’s huge, he’s beautiful. You know, I thought I was the biggest world leader, but I walked in, I said, ‘Wow, he’s big. He might be even bigger than me. It’s close. He might be.’” 

After all, who needs self-respect when you’re 14-feet tall?