There were about seven or eight of them, mostly male, as I recall, all of them in their mid to late 20s, and all determined to have what is often called "the craic".

The definition of "the craic" has changed a lot over the last 10 years.

Before the Celtic Badger began stalking the land, it meant a few pints and a few laughs with friends. You went to the pub, linked up with your pals and used alcohol sensibly, as a tool to melt inhibitions and as a boost to sociability. This being Ireland, there were exceptions to that rule.

Drink sometimes led to problems with addiction; often it was the cause of people beating the heads off each other at closing time. But mostly, Irish people loved their few pints, knew how to hold their drink and had the craic without causing trouble or involving anybody else in their activities.

Although that is still the case, it seems to me that for a growing number of people, craic must not just be done, but it must be seen to be done. No longer is it enough merely to sit in a corner of a bar - laughing, arguing, slagging, debating - in the welcoming bosom of your friends and family; now you demand that your enjoyment be seen and acknowledged by all those around you. Everybody must hear your anecdote; everybody must feel touched by the depth and variety of your humour; all must bow down in wonder at your command of sexual innuendo; nobody must leave the pub without acknowledging that for one boisterous hour, they were in the presence of the best specimens that modern Ireland has to offer - confident, assertive, solvent Tiger cubs, all familiar with the intimacies of "the craic" and everything that it entails.

And so it was in the leading hotel I will not name. The group of eight were ridiculously loud that night. No thought went unexpressed, no decibel level went unchallenged. Everybody in the bar could hear their conversation - the fevered predictions of who and how they would shag later that night, the masochistic expectation of the next morning's hangover. To say that this group was responsible for a tense atmosphere in the bar would be to understate matters somewhat. For those of us who were there, being force fed their fun, the experience was extremely uncomfortable.

The hotel in question has a bit of a reputation as a classy joint, the best that the new, monied Ireland can offer. It's not the kind of place you necessarily expect to find yobs at play. You might expect, however, that when a group of people is misbehaving to the extent that this one was, somebody in charge might have a word, ask those involved to quieten down a bit, remind them that there are other people there who don't necessarily want to hear about their sexual organs. But no: not a word of censure was uttered that night.

The waiting staff continued to dance attendance on them, bring them drinks, put up with their rudeness, treat them like the royalty they believed themselves to be.

Such people present a problem for business owners. In this new, confident Ireland, where the shackles of the church have happily fallen away, and where politics is an unfortunately debased pursuit, one of the new religions is individuality, the notion that we are all unique beings whose prime responsibility is to our own welfare and to the fulfillment of our own needs. The right of the individual to give full expression to the singular magic of his personality is placed beside the rights of the community as a whole and is found to be paramount. Hence the group of unreconstructed yobbos in the posh hotel; hence also, I suspect, the group of diners who were turfed out of Thornton's Restaurant in Dublin last weekend.

Most of you will have heard the disputed details of this story by now. On the one hand, the diners say they were ordered out of Thornton's purely because one of their party refused to eat a plate of chips that had arrived well after the main course. "Within minutes of the chips being sent back, " one of them told RT�'s Liveline, "this lunatic arrives out with a plate of chips in his hand, bangs them down on the table and said. . . 'Eat them, you dickhead.'" The lunatic in question turned out to be the Michelin-starred restaurant's owner Kevin Thornton, who subsequently apologised for his bad language but stood by his decision to ask the diners to leave. "It is completely unacceptable to treat the team at Thornton's in the manner which some members of that group did, " he said.

Thornton's doesn't do chips, although if they did, they'd probably be the best chips in the world. Like all of Ireland's Michelin restaurants, Thornton's is trying to achieve something different, to offer food in a combination and variety, and with a creativity and imagination and difference, that you don't often find. And so Kevin Thornton doesn't do chips.

Nevertheless, a Tiger cub demanded chips and what the Tiger cubs want, the Tiger cubs get. That's one of the tenets of the new religion. From scratch therefore, on a busy Saturday night, Thornton's cooked chips, purely for the delectation of one diner. And when they arrived, he sent them back.

Although Kevin Thornton has expressed regret for his offensive language, by his actions he made himself one of the heroes of the week. He stood up to untrammelled individualism, which places instant gratification of a person's needs and desires at the heart of society, and stood up for what might be termed the oldfashioned values of politeness and civility, where the possession of money does not automatically entitle you to everything you want.

I look forward to my next visit.