Perhaps it's one of those weird occasions when you hear about something for the first time and then references to it start to pop up all over the place, but suddenly Ned O'Keeffe's braindead xenophobia seems to be everywhere. O'Keeffe, you'll remember, is the Fianna Fáil TD for Cork North Redneck who recently criticised the Financial Regulator, the loquacious Mr Elderfield, for not giving the banks "enough space" to sort themselves out. If given time, O'Keeffe said, "they [the banks] won't be depending on the state or Mr Elderfield to tell us what to do. We don't want foreigners here. Michael Collins, Liam Lynch, Padraig Pearse and James Connolly wouldn't have these foreigners running our business." For some reason, he didn't mention that American busybody Eamon de Valera.

It would be easy to dismiss O'Keeffe on the basis that he is one of those slobbering gobshites who roll off the Fianna Fáil conveyor belt with scary regularity, but he has been elected in every general election since 1982, so we must assume that there is some support around for his "foreigners out" argument. Indeed, there's no need to assume. The evidence is everywhere.

Last week, in a brief but meaningful flirtation with this newspaper's sports section, I wrote a piece about supporting Leeds United, an English football team. Some people grumbled. Why can't "you people" support an Irish club, one person wanted to know. Arguing along similar lines, somebody else accused me of being ashamed of being Irish, of being a West Brit and of self-loathing for having more in common with a northern England industrial town than my home place, which he assumed was Dublin. (Perish that particular thought.)

The short, smartarsed, answer to those complaints is that I do support an Irish team. They're called Ireland, and are managed by an Italian. The slightly longer response is that supporting a team simply because you were born in its catchment area is to dispense with your critical faculties, go with the flow, and do what you're told in a completely uncurious, unimaginative way. A six-year-old who chooses a team to support on the basis that he likes their white shirts, or the tags on their socks, demonstrates a more lively intellect, and a more admirable streak of independence, than the mulish patriots who insist that being Irish means that you must throw your ability to think out the window.

It's not such an important point when it's confined to a reasonably polite debate about football teams. But what about when the argument is canvassed in other areas? Two weeks ago, after the killing of Toyosi Shitta-bey in Co Dublin, the Sunday Tribune's website played host to a highly animated debate about what had happened in Tyrrellstown on Good Friday. Most of the contributions were intelligent and impassioned, but some were undoubtedly the product of crazed and racist minds. The hostility wasn't just toward black people for stealing our jobs and our women. One man called Phil was outed as that most dreaded of creatures, an Englishman with an opinion, and suffered the consequences. "Phil", said one commentator, "we will ensure our country does not become a dirty dump like yours you sad brit freak, a brit on here telling us what do do, we kicked you lot out a long time ago you limey wierdo your a typical product of the rubbish english education system".

One can only hope for the sake of England's future that its rubbish education system produces better punctuation, spelling and grammar than that. Our own certainly let that particular contributor down. Still, his viewpoint is hardly an uncommon one. Some of Sean Quinn's supporters have objected to the regulator on the basis that he's a foreigner. In the Dáil, we know that Ned O'Keeffe can't be doing with a "Brit on here telling us what to do". No doubt many of these people will be sitting before their televisions this summer bellowing their bile at the England team in the World Cup.

In a globalised world, the idea that only an Irish person should do important jobs in Ireland is clearly ridiculous. Has the country not been ruined recently by Irish citizens, men of the people like Bertie Ahern, good reliable products of the Irish education system like Brian Cowen, charming Irish chancers like Sean FitzPatrick? Isn't it time to give somebody else a go? Personally, I couldn't care less whether Elderfield is from England or not. Like most others, I just want him to do a good job. Strange and all as it might seem to Ned O'Keeffe, I suspect Michael Collins and James Connolly might feel the same.

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ddoyle@tribune.ie