Why are we always talking ourselves into third place?

Why did we as a nation seem to glory this week in our third-place position in the first round of our bid to host the Rugby World Cup in 2023? Our bid in fairness harnessed the best and the brightest to put our best foot forward in our campaign to host the biggest ever sports tournament on the island of Ireland.

So is it really in the kind of ‘tatters’ much of the media and commentators seemed to revel in with the announcement that South Africa and France had beaten us into ‘last place’ in a ‘forensic’ technical analysis of the bids?

A closer look at the analysis shows that our bid is not in ‘tatters’. For example South Africa, France and Ireland scored exactly the same under the ‘security’ heading. This is laughable.

Unfortunately and tragically South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world – 35 per 100,000 people. The comparable figure in Ireland is less than one! South Africa with 18,675 murders last year has a homicide rate 55 times greater than Ireland per capita. France tragically has seen so many terrorist incidents the country is on permanent alert with soldiers on the streets, yet it got the same score as Ireland in the analysis.

The bookies had Ireland down as favourite to get the World Cup – the bid is not yet fully over. Why did we talk ourselves down at the first hurdle? It got me thinking that as a nation we revel in talking ourselves down.

John Skehan the outgoing chairman of the National Housing Agency dared to mention last week how our housing and homelessness crisis is ‘no worse’ than other comparable European countries.

He said ‘our housing crisis is completely ‘normal’ in the sense that ‘every country in Europe has equivalent issues in terms of affordability, in terms of homelessness and in terms of the appropriateness of the mix.’

Skehan was criticised when he pointed out there are 70 different organisations working with the homeless. But I did not read this as a criticism. It is a credit to Ireland that so many organisations – many run by brilliant volunteers – are tackling the crisis.

We are different to other European countries in terms of our reaction and response to the crisis. Our nearest neighbour, the UK, has a worse housing crisis but it does not top the national daily agenda the way it does in Ireland.

The nation is not in tatters: the reaction to Storm Ophelia was a great example of a country working together – our first responders and utilities such as the ESB proved once again they are world class.

Yes, we have difficulties in our health service, the rollout of broadband and our public transport.

But as the recent TV series Trauma showed with breathtaking effect we have a massive core of highly trained medics working flat out when people are in crisis.

Once again on Liveline this week we witnessed great citizen-to-citizen generosity when callers spoke of difficulties with banks. People react on two levels: calling on Government to deal with the bankers while also offering a helping hand.

The bare facts are that Ireland is in the top three in the Rugby World Cup bid – not in tatters – and as a nation we have a lot more to be proud of in the challenges ahead than we are led to believe.