Phil MacGiolla Bháin

I’M writing these words in the last days of August. Here in rural Ireland, it’s a time to get busy with those summer jobs that get the home place prepared for the dark winter months.

Twenty years ago, I was with colleagues in Dublin for a once -per-term meet-up of participants in a postgraduate psychotherapy course. It was organised across Northern Europe with students from Britain, Denmark, Iceland and Ireland.

IT IS perhaps the human condition to take for granted your good fortune. However, I have no excuse for failing to regularly remind myself that for the past 30 years, I’ve been able to call Ireland’s best-kept secret my homeplace.