In Ireland we are not particularly good at distinguishing the massed public from a Massed public. Because we didn’t ‘get’ the Enlightenment like Scotland, England or France, social scientific accounts of a political imaginary called Irish society conceive of Ireland as a plurality of homogeneous communities. Consequently, the Irish state tends to be characterised as epiphenomenal, a reflection of a multitude of localisms. … More Catholic is not Irish is not catholic.