My mother hails from Kerry. For most of my childhood I rebelled against this particular fact and was a fervent Dub. Throughout the 70s and 80s I watched Kerry maul every other team and yet I refused to succumb. It was only in adulthood that I embraced the kingdom and began thinking like a Munster man.

Having stated that clearly, we need to talk about Francie.

Francie is the ‘star’ of German TV’s trip to Kerry to elucidate Danny Healy-Rae’s views on rural isolation and how the odd drink or three can actually solve it. This column has spoken about it before here but Tuesday’s Spiegel TV documentary warrants us to return to the subject.

Francie is what we love to call a character. The type of character who sits up at a bar and sings. True to type, Francie does just that. He has his three pints and then we see him walking/staggering to his car to drive home. This image is the height of irresponsibility. Have you drank 3 pints and attempted to complete any task? Your judgment is impaired. This is a fact.

The Spiegel TV programme aired a week after we heard another section of irish society give two fingers at German society. To me there is no difference between the wreckless banking of Drumm and his Anglo cronies who saw themselves beyond the law and the likes of Danny Healy-Rae who want to perpetuate the idea that doing the ‘right thing’[that is obeying the law in my language] is somewhat foreign and undermines society as we know it.

Any form of drink driving is wrong. Trying to confuse it with rural isolation and how we might find ways to combat it is both wrong and self-serving. As this column has said on many occasions, it’s time for Ireland to grow up.