The Irish are disastrous at keeping a secret, but the juicy ones are all out

God be with the days when the annual unsealing of the State Papers threw up such gems as the time Margaret Thatcher hit Charles Haughey across the face with a tea pot (I may be slightly mis-remembering this). While nobody would want to go back to that Troubled time of uneasy Anglo-Irish relations, there’s no doubt that tricky diplomacy led to juicier new year’s revelations. Now it’s all milky drips — I’m determined to really hammer this tea-pot analogy — about how sound everyone thought Bertie was during the Belfast Agreement negotiations and the Queen fan-girling Mary Robinson over her work in the Third World.

Back when I was a baby reporter, I loved being dispatched to the National Archives in January to pore over the newly released secret documents. Because I lived through a time now officially known as history, it was possible to come across nuggets about deValera writing to the American embassy or other US politicians to offer his tuppence worth on how to defeat Communism, or John Charles McQuaid offering to get a few Masses said for the GIs in purgatory or whatever (file under tea-pot in the unreliable memories drawer.)

Again, those were times of tinderbox international relations — albeit way, way above our small island paygrade — and so these were real secrets that raised eyebrows even 30 years later, unlike the dogs-in-thestreet type disclosures that accompany these less turbulent times.

The trouble is that we Irish are very bad at keeping secrets. Even in times of conflict, we’re not great at keeping our mouths closed: surely one of the most repeated phrases in school history text books is ‘but word of the planned insurrection reached authorities and the rebels were arrested’ or a version of the same. It’s surely no coinciand dence that there is a Third Secret of Fatima, but none at all of Knock: presumably Our Lady, well briefed on her rural Irish audience, knew that any utterances she made during her appearance in Mayo in 1879 would end up splashed all over the Western People by the weekend, no matter how many times she urged the devout to cross their hearts and hope to die. In the end, she said nothing at all, which all things considered was probably for the best.

Given all that, I’ve never been entirely sure why we bother with an Official Secrets Act in this country. The first time I signed the act, way back in the history period, I honestly expected some white-gloved government official to hand me a sealed box containing all the secrets of the country, but none materialised. In fact, I wasn’t told a single secret. Not so much as a pregnancy rumour or a steer on who in Cabinet was wearing a wig. I seem to remember signing it again a few years later making a mental note that nobody asked if I’d spilt any tea (again with the tea thing!) in the meantime. Obviously, because I am personally completely unable to keep a secret —literally, my nickname when I was in my twenties was ‘Your Secret’s Safe With Me’ Looney — I would have told everyone anything juicy I might have heard, but there was nothing. Nada.

For all that, my curiosity was piqued again a few years back when The Youngest was obliged to sign the Act in order to do work experience in the National Museum when she was in transition year in secondary school. I couldn’t really imagine what awful, pendulous secrets the State felt it couldn’t possibly share with the general population but could trust to a 16-year-old schoolgirl, but apart from a report of her dusting an ancient skeleton — which, to be fair, did sound a bit Nancy Drew — she brought home nothing more than a fridge magnet.

Which makes me wonder if the State actually has any secrets at all. Or could it be the case that deValera, like Calamity Jane before him, told all the good stuff to a shooting star, the way that lovers often do, and soon he was shouting all the secrets from the highest hills and even telling the golden daffodils?

If he did, then I wouldn’t blame him. He might have carried an American passport, but Dev was Irish to his core, and our inability to keep anything to ourselves is imprinted on our DNA. Perhaps we should put that on the statute books, and scrap the redundant Official Secrets Act in favour of a new Come Here Till I Tell You Act. And to save us a lot of faff, nobody would ever need sign it: instead, a considered signature could opt us out of its reach. But honestly, why would anyone want to do that?