People often try to identify peculiarly Irish characteristics, from sociability to literary creativity to fondness for drink.
Some say trauma is inherited through generations and the effects of the famine or oppressive clericalism are evident in our behaviour today.
Last week I experienced the psychological legacy of the First Communion Suit.
Perhaps it was those Frank O’Connor short stories or childhood memories of frantic arrangements and disastrous alterations.
“He looks great and you’d never notice the shoulders,” a grandmother famously declared to my mother’s friend one year. We still laugh about this, but the First Communion Suit has weighed heavily on my psyche.