Thirdly, the ICM poll benefits from being broken down. 22 percent of those surveyed 'believed they are in some part Irish'. When having an ancestor going back to the Irish famine in the 1840s is put on a par with being an Irishman just arrived from Dublin on the lookout for work, it is no wonder the polls found that 14million people in Britain are Irish. This expands the definition of Irishness beyond all previous bounds. It is on this basis that the 1991 census reached its estimate of five million Irish-descended UK residents.
Irish groups have.
There are seats on quangos and council committees to be had - and Irish community leaders don't want to miss out. As far as the census campaigners are concerned, Irishness is something you feel - a feeling you can have even if you are in fact British. This is Irishness as trendy badge, rather than Irishness as nationality. Which might explain why young British-born people are the keenest of all to 'tick the Irish box'. It looks like it is their British-born children and grandchildren, and the rest of the 'lost Irish', who are most excited about ticking the Irish box.