We newly-Irish inched out of the hall. We were all colours and stayed all colours, all nationalities, now one nationality...
I thought I’d have the whole bus to myself, but there were around a dozen other passengers. Five-to-five on a Monday morning on the Aircoach from Derry. Calling at Drumahoe, Maghera, Belfast International Airport, Belfast City, Dublin Airport, terminating at Dublin City.
I’d brought a book with me for the journey, but there was no light to read by, only dimly glowing phone screens. The sleep I struggled to leave when my alarm sounded now stayed stubbornly elusive, and so I just sat and stared and, as usual, wondered about the journeys the other passengers were making. The answer came when we reached Belfast International, where I was left alone until an older couple got on board.
They knew the driver, and sat up at the front, where they told him how they had just completed the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Before that they’d been to Jamaica, where they were kept awake by reggae music until the early hours of the morning.
Passing Lough Neagh, the sun smeared orange low in the skies above Belfast. There, the couple left the coach, which filled with passengers all heading for Dublin Airport.
Everyone was leaving the island except me. I stayed on, because my destination was Dublin and its convention centre, where I was due to swear my oath of fidelity to Ireland in the final act of my journey to receiving Irish citizenship.
An accident on the roads had made the already slow-moving rush hour traffic draw nearly to a standstill. Worried I would be late to register for the ceremony, I took a taxi from the coach stop, outside the Gresham Hotel.
I told the driver I lived in Derry and he asked me if Derry was in fact two cities – one in the south called Derry, and one in the north called Londonderry - and I told him it was one city, and I’d only ever heard it called Londonderry on the news. The driver guessed from my accent I was from Liverpool. He asked me if I ever encountered any hostility because of my accent and I told him no: people just wanted to tell me they had studied in Liverpool or their daughter was working there now, and apart from that they only wanted to talk about football. He told me he’d always liked Jurgen Klopp and I told him I never had.
He pointed out three women walking on the pavement. He said they were illegal immigrants and that he wasn’t racist and the government was giving them houses and letting Irish-born people live on the streets. We drove past the Custom House where my uncle’s search for our family ancestry came to an abrupt halt due to the fire during the War of Independence.
“Collins did it,” the taxi driver said three or four times, like I was interrogating him and I’d finally got him to crack, though I’d not said a word.
I needn’t have worried about being late. The queue to register wrapped itself around the building. The Justice Minister later told us that our ceremony was the first of three that day, by the end of which there would be 3,600 new citizens of Ireland. And I would be one of them; one of us.
The queue continued inside the building, looping back on itself time and again like we were counters on a snakes and ladders board. I got talking to the couple behind me, an Irishman and his Brazilian husband. William, the Brazilian, told me how he had come to Ireland to learn English. He said he had lived in Belfast and been to Derry many times and that he loved the city and he couldn’t think of a place more beautiful than Donegal. As we neared the desks where our identities were checked and our papers signed, applicants and their guests were separated.
To become an Irish citizen, I had to embark on a journey to a destination I much desired. Why did I make the journey? It is not because I want to hold an Irish passport, to get through airport queues more quickly. It is because this is my home, and I can’t imagine any circumstances in which I would leave. And it is because, from the moment I saw my daughter, I wanted to be the same as her
— Dominic Kearney
My name, application number, passport, and papers were taken and studied by a civil servant who told me she loved this part of the job, meeting people at the end of the journey being so much better than sifting through the plethora of forms during it. She smiled and welcomed me, told me she wished me well, and gave me a tricolour lapel pin.
Inside the hall, we waited for the ceremony to begin, serenaded by a military band playing themes from Star Wars and a medley of Irish folk tunes, all whiskey and wild rovers, striking back at the empire.
I was there alone, possibly the only applicant so, no potential guest able to join me, no children allowed to attend. It was better this way. I could absorb the scene, and solitude allowed me to appreciate the significance, the momentousness of what I was doing. The oath of fidelity I would swear along with my fellow applicants were no mere words.
To become a British citizen all I had to do was be born. The British national anthem has never meant anything to me, a song beseeching God to look after a monarch who is already very well looked after, thank you very much.
To become an Irish citizen, I had to embark on a journey to a destination I much desired. Why did I make the journey? It is not because I want to hold an Irish passport, to get through airport queues more quickly. It is because this is my home, and I can’t imagine any circumstances in which I would leave. And it is because, from the moment I saw my daughter, I wanted to be the same as her.
She is now seven, fiercely, passionately Irish, and regarded my citizenship application with suspicion. At times, she seemed to hold me personally accountable for 800 years of oppression.
“You’re English,” she tells me.
“But I have Irish ancestry,” I plead. “Kearney’s an Irish name.”
“You were born in England,” she tells me.
“Liverpool’s not really in England,” I say.
“Look on a map,” she tells me.
The ceremony was a lovely blend of friendly and formal, welcoming and deeply serious. An honour guard stood to attention at the side of the stage throughout the proceedings. The Minister of Justice thanked us for what we had already done for her – soon to be our – country. I wondered what I’d done.
The presiding judge made mention of the harpist who played when the band finished. He told us of the special place the harp has in Irish culture, but made mention of its depiction in the carvings of Ancient Egypt, which showed how cultures cross borders and oceans. In front of me, three Egyptian women – a different kind of Cairo gang altogether – waved their arms in delight.
Solitude allowed me to appreciate the significance, the momentousness of what I was doing. The oath of fidelity I would swear along with my fellow applicants were no mere words
— Dominic Kearney
We stood for the anthem at the end of the ceremony. The closest I’ve ever felt to having an anthem is the music played when Everton run out at Goodison. It’s an old folk song, Johnny Todd, about a sailor who left his love in Liverpool, to travel the world. The Irish anthem was something new; it was now mine.
We newly-Irish inched out of the hall. We were all colours and stayed all colours, all nationalities, now one nationality. We had all dressed for the occasion. I was in suit and tie. Many were in Ireland tops. The woman two seats down from me wore an orange shirt and green trousers, and lacked only a white belt to complete the ensemble.
Outside, the sun threw its jewels on the Liffey. The new citizens and their guests were reluctant to leave the scene. So many photographs, so many smiles and hugs, so much laughter and delight, so much barely contained joy.
I walked back up O’Connell Street, past the GPO, to the stop opposite the Gresham Hotel and caught the Aircoach home. When we stopped at Dublin Airport, I bought myself a packet of Tayto and a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate. I have known since my first visit to Ireland in 1966 that the Cadbury’s here is better than anywhere else. I talked for a while with a couple from Maghera who were returning from safari in South Africa, an anniversary present from their children.
The hours back to Derry were suffused with a silent elation. I would feel reluctant to call myself Irish, for reasons I can’t fully explain, but feel nevertheless a tangible, bursting pride in calling myself a citizen of Ireland.
I had thought my journey arduous – a daunting application form, the constant worry that I had given the wrong information, or failed to include a vital document, a 3.30am alarm call, nine hours on a coach.
But was it? Compared to those made by many I’d sat with back in Dublin? No. I’d not crossed continents. I hadn’t suffered under brutal regimes. I’d not faced intolerance and hate. My journey was easy. All I had to do was fall in love and catch the Liverpool ferry.
Back at the house, my daughter met me at the door. She hugged me, and told me she’d done her homework. I showed her the tricolour pin that I’d been wearing in my lapel since the morning. I told her she could have it.
“You keep it for now,” she said. Tá mé go maith. Tá mé sa bhaile.
