We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland

by Fintan O'Toole

While Ahern was signing these blank cheques, young Irish citizens were on their way to becoming the greatest form fillers in the world. In 1987, when Haughey was back in power, a bureaucratic act that most people dread became the centre of a unique form of social life. It was perhaps the first truly indigenous genre of indoor entertainment to be developed in Ireland since the days when The Late Late Show replaced the seanachaí. It was called the Donnelly Visa party. It was, in a way, a subgenre of gambling: the point was to win a lottery by improving your odds. The prize was a green card that would allow you to get the hell out of Ireland and settle legally in the United States. The visa was named after an Irish-American Democratic Congressman, Brian Donnelly. He sponsored a programme to award 10,000 visas to randomly chosen applicants from round the world. The Donnelly scheme commenced in January 1987. There were 1.5 million applicants from thirty-six countries. Yet, of that first tranche of visas, 4,161 went to Irish applicants. How did one small country get 41 per cent of the prizes in a worldwide lottery? Young people in Ireland realized that each application had to be filled and signed individually − no photocopies would be accepted. And there was a target date on which the first 10,000 applications would be processed. But nothing in the rules said that only one application was valid. Hence the Donnelly Visa party – get your friends together, supply some drink, give t...