{"id":386135,"date":"2026-03-15T09:07:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T09:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/386135\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T09:07:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T09:07:12","slug":"about-4500-woollen-scarves-at-the-heart-of-irelands-diplomacy-plans-for-europe-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/386135\/","title":{"rendered":"About 4,500 woollen scarves at the heart of Ireland\u2019s diplomacy plans for Europe \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

With fuel prices rising, the Atlantic alliance creaking and two wars now raging on its periphery, it\u2019s a difficult time to be the European Union<\/a>. Ireland, set to take on the presidency of the council of the EU from July, faces an uphill battle to get things on track. But it may have found a secret weapon: approximately 4,500 woollen scarves. <\/p>\n

Thanks to contract fairness rules, an apparent plan by the Department of Foreign Affairs<\/a> to wow diplomats with gifts of \u201ca distinctive and uniquely Irish artistic character\u201d has hit the Government\u2019s procurement website. Could you be the knitter to provide the likes of Emmanuel Macron<\/a>, Giorgia Meloni<\/a> and Viktor Orban<\/a> with insulation next winter when the whipping winds may coincide with record-high liquefied natural gas costs? <\/p>\n

You\u2019ll need to make it out of wool, though not necessarily Irish wool as long as you provide information on where the wool is from. They must be deterioration-proof for at least a year, by which time the officials will be long gone. And they must be must be \u201cmanufactured in a shade of green associated with Irish heritage eg moss, emerald, heather, forest\u201d. <\/p>\n

The most important thing is speed: tenders should be sent to something described as \u201cthe electronic tenderbox\u201d (seriously) by April 8th, and the first scarves should start hitting diplomatic goody-bags by June 5th. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe Government is to pay for woollen scarves to give to European dignitaries when Ireland takes on the EU presidency. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe successful tenderer shall ensure that all scarves supplied under this contract are produced in a consistent and uniform shade of green, with no visible variation in colour between batches or units,\u201d the document goes on. Not forty shades of green on this occasions \u2013 one shade. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe Turfman sculpture in Bellaghy, Co Derry, where Seamus Heaney grew up and is buried. Photograph: Alan Betson New territory<\/p>\n

Fresh from a decade of political confusion about whether it should be hard or soft or relocated to the Irish Sea, the border deserves some diversion. It could come in the form of a scheme to have the entire \u201cborderlands\u201d declared a Unesco \u201cregion of literature\u201d, as revealed last weekend in The Guardian. <\/p>\n

Are the borderlands a region of literature? Sure, why not, is Overheard\u2019s position. The Sligo of Yeats is near-ish Fermanagh, the Armagh of Muldoon is near-ish Monaghan and the Monaghan of Kavanagh is, in turn, near-ish Armagh. <\/p>\n

The plan\u2019s proposers, Arts Over Borders, are adopting quite an expansive view of what constitutes both a border area and a relevant writer. Seamus Heaney\u2019s homeplace is half as far from the Glens of Antrim as it is from Donegal, but he\u2019s mentioned. And so (again, why not) are the likes of Oscar Wilde (Dublin\u2019s Westland Row), Jonathan Swift (Dublin\u2019s Hoey\u2019s Court), and Samuel Beckett (Dublin\u2019s Foxrock), all of whom went to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen. Could it have been there that they developed their biting wit?<\/p>\n

No matter the liberties taken, it could prove a clever way to invite the coveted American dollar to less-loved corners of the island. While rugby and GAA cling to the traditional provinces, the real map of Ireland now shows the \u201cWild Atlantic Way\u201d up the west, \u201cIreland\u2019s Ancient East\u201d in the east, \u201cIreland\u2019s Hidden Heartlands\u201d down the middle and \u201cDublin\u201d in Dublin. The \u201cNorthern Literary Lands\u201d, as its proponents call the new branding effort, would fit right in. <\/p>\n

\"EUEU member states have agreed to ban using meat-related terms such as ‘steak’ and ‘bacon’ to market plant-based foods but spared veggie ‘burgers’ and ‘sausage’. Photograph: Georg Hochmuth\/APA\/AFP via Getty\/Austria Out Wurst behaviour<\/p>\n

It\u2019s goodbye to vegan veal after the European Union landed on a compromise plan for banning nefarious plant-eaters from referring to their products by meat names. <\/p>\n

The long-running effort has been the subject of much lobbying, and some slightly surreal political commentary implying a constant risk of accidentally eating pork escalopes made of insect protein. Much of the early debate focused on veggie burgers and sausages \u2013 both relatively popular substitutes \u2013 but the provisional agreement in fact exempted them.<\/p>\n

Instead, new rules will rule out the use of more general \u2013 or even physical \u2013 terms ranging from beef, pork, goose and goat to cuts and parts such as shank, rump, wing and liver. <\/p>\n

Are European consumers eating a lot of vegan liver? Data is scant, though there are some recipes online for \u201cmock\u201d chopped liver, a traditional Jewish festive dish \u2013 it\u2019s often made of walnuts. <\/p>\n

The French, who traditionally take their steaks closer to the state of nature than even committed Irish carnivores tolerate, have been particularly in favour of action. \u201cWe refuse to let plant proteins appropriate meat names for marketing purposes,\u201d said Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Guihard, meat industry leader, as though the peas themselves were launching the products. <\/p>\n

\u201cEine Wurst ist eine Wurst. Wurst ist nicht vegan,\u201d added German chancellor Friedrich Merz, in a contribution that probably does not need to be translated. The Germans eat 19kg of sausage per person per year, among the most in the world.<\/p>\n

They can keep it up, as long as they stay alert to the ingredients list. Some of the Eurocrats suggested that consumers could be trusted to know the difference. After all, \u201ca beef tomato doesn\u2019t contain any beef,\u201d as Austrian MEP Anna St\u00fcrgkh pointed out during earlier debate. \u201cLadies\u2019 fingers are not made of actual ladies\u2019 fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"KildareKildare Village’s S\u00f3 Irish campaign S\u00f3 what?<\/p>\n

\u201cSoe that the speach being Irish, the hart must needes be Irishe,\u201d Edmund Spenser, the poet and colonial administrator, once wrote, \u201cfor out of the aboundance of the hart, the tonge speaketh.\u201d <\/p>\n

Overheard has this week been trying to figure out what this means for Kildare Village, which has been tempting shoppers down the M7 with its \u201cS\u00f3 Irish\u201d ad campaign. <\/p>\n

\u201cDiscover a shopping experience that\u2019s S\u00f3 Irish at Kildare Village,\u201d says the ad copy of the boutique out-of-town shopping destination owned by British-based Value Retail plc, which itself is part-owned by US private equity fund L Catterton, in which French global luxury conglomerate LVMH is a major investor.<\/p>\n

S\u00f3 welcoming, it goes on. S\u00f3 memorable. S\u00f3 stylish. S\u00f3 what\u2019s the story with the fada, you\u2019re probably wondering. It turns out that the word is not the English so, as in \u201cthat\u2019s so ridiculous\u201d, but the Irish word s\u00f3, meaning comfort, ease, satisfaction and enjoyment of food, prosperity and, in this particular case, luxury. Or at least it \u201cdraws inspiration\u201d from the Irish word s\u00f3, as Victor Biffi Rosano, Kildare Village\u2019s business director, told industry publication Adworld. <\/p>\n

The quasi-bilingual campaign has ironically disrupted the suaimhneas and s\u00f3 of gaeilgeoirs. But the stylistic diacritic \u2013 the practice of adding a symbol to a letter primarily because it looks cool and supports the brand image you want to convey \u2013 has a long and successful history. Neither Mot\u00f6rhead nor M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce worried too much about confusing the Germans. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With fuel prices rising, the Atlantic alliance creaking and two wars now raging on its periphery, it\u2019s a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,8104,18,6586,2219,13,14,6585,6,19,17,26303,3625,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,46403,26163],"class_list":{"0":"post-386135","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-department-of-foreign-affairs","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-emmanuel-macron","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-featured-news","15":"tag-featurednews","16":"tag-giorgia-meloni","17":"tag-headlines","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-irish-language","21":"tag-kildare","22":"tag-latest-news","23":"tag-latestnews","24":"tag-main-news","25":"tag-mainnews","26":"tag-news","27":"tag-top-stories","28":"tag-topstories","29":"tag-unesco","30":"tag-viktor-orban"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116232404788271415","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}