You write, “I get the death cults of Irish Nationalism but I think many countries had this. I also understand the stifling hold that the Catholic Church had over the people for a long time, but that was also not unique to Ireland. And interesting study would be to compare IQ averages in traditionally Catholic countries and non Catholic ones.”

Well, I think there is a third category: nominally Catholic countries that are secular such as France. A law was passed to formally separate Church and state in 1905. As far back as 1879, there was a national secularization campaign in France to remove priests from the administrative boards of hospitals and charities. The Republic of Ireland isn’t even there yet.

Canon law took priority over secular law for decades after we got our independence in 1922. In fact, it wasn’t until 1990 that the credibility of the Catholic Church in Ireland was called into question when it was found out that Bishop Eamon Casey had an affair and had a child. It caused a real scandal at the time.

We embraced the Catholic Church after 1922 as a part of our identity. This makes no sense to me. We should have had a Protestant Reformation of our own in the 16th century. The Catholic Church betrayed Ireland. It was the English Pope, Pope Adrian IV, who called on the English King to invade Ireland in 1155 in order to bring the Irish Church into line with the Roman Catholic Church.. It was another Pope, Pope Innocent III, who ordained King Henry II of England as Lord of Ireland in 1172 after he invaded Ireland the previous year. The British have been here ever since.

That aside, Ireland was never conquered by the Roman Empire. I would have thought that would have been a matter of national pride and incentivize us to break with Rome in the 16th century but it was not to be.

My sense is that the average IQ difference between the Republic of Ireland and much of Europe has closed from about a 10 point difference in the 1970s to about 5 points today. The Troubles have by and large ended in Northern Ireland. Admittedly, dissident Republicans are still at war with the British state, IRA members are still killing each other and there are more “peace lines” in Belfast than ever before but I prefer to be optimistic.

That 5 point difference is still significant though. The Bertelsmann Foundation published their Social Justice Index report for 2015 for 28 EU countries which shows that the Republic of Ireland is continuing its slide down the rankings on the various indices of social justice such as poverty prevention, equitable education, labour market access, social cohesion and non discrimination, health and intergenerational justice. We’re now at 18th overall in the ranking out of 28 countries in the EU. Former Eastern Bloc regions such as Slovenia and the Czech Republic passed us sometime ago. Since then, more have overtaken us such as Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia.

http://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/fileadmin/files/BSt/Publikationen/GrauePublikationen/Studie_NW_Social-Justice-in-the-EU-Index-Report-2015_2015.pdf

You write, “As for the binge drinking young people. It is a growing problem all over Europe but Ireland and the UK seem to be worst affected as far as I can see.”

According to World Health Organization data for 2010, many Central and Eastern European countries would drink us under the table.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption_per_capita

Also, in 2013, advocacy group, Drive Aware told us that we were drinking 20% less than 10 years previously.

Much like “rape culture”, “drink culture” is a manufactured crisis. In the US, reported rape has steadily gone down since 1990, yet Americans are constantly told by state funded feminists that there is a rape culture.

Expanding government drives these campaigns. Let’s create an imagined social problem, then we’ll set up a quango to do something about it. Alcohol Ireland, an advocacy group to promote safe drinking and campaign for more government regulations, is funded by the government. It’s like the government is talking to itself. There are many more examples of this.

You write “ I is not a side effect of poverty. It is not caused by hardship. The only thing I can think of; and this is just an unstudied opinion, is that it is the result of having it too easy for too long. There is a culture of alienation amongst the young people now. They are dislocated and have no sense of belonging. And the competition amongst them to keep up with the latest whatever is fierce.”

I think you’re right. My generation, Generation X, were spoilt rotten as is the current generation, Generation Snowflake.

The way I see it, the biggest problem we face is the breakdown of the nuclear family. 36% of children are born out of wedlock now in the Republic of Ireland. Yet, I don’t see much discussion of this in the media. That’s because it’s not really in the government’s interest to discuss that problem as dislocated families fuel government programs such as the single mother welfare state.

You write, “Girls feel like little more than cheap sex-toys because that is what feminist ideology has trained them to be. Boys have been mocked and ridiculed constantly and cast as brutes and rapists. It is enough to make anyone reach for a bottle.”

Perhaps.

To return to the IQ thing, I think unintelligent people tend to worship death rather than life. The Irish republican martyr tradition followed on from the Irish Catholic martyr tradition. When Fianna Fáil commemorate Wolfe Tone annually at Bodenstown cemetery, they’re not participating in an Irish Republican tradition but rather in an Irish Catholic tradition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Catholic_Martyrs