We’ve been rebranded. Without so much as running it by a focus group, our leaders have decided Ireland will henceforth be known as Eire Ireland at European council of ministers meetings.

The Finnish and Belgians may already sport dual-language nameplates at these powwows, but our new designation is sure to raise a few eyebrows around the conference tables. Because to date we haven’t exactly been flagging Eire as the name of the country.

In fact the only mention of Eire I could find in several rainforests’ worth of council documentation was in an obscure report on business taxation from 1999. There it was, buried in some dense prose outlining tax credits for film-makers. The problem is, the prose related to British tax credits. So the reference to Eire came from the Brits, not us.

Therein lies the rub. We don’t generally call it Eire, but the Brits sometimes do and, let’s be honest, we don’t like it. There is something faintly patronising about that drawled Air-ah that causes Irish hackles to rise.

Of course, Eire is the name of the country in Irish and it’s there on the coins, stamps and passports, but you don’t hear English people referring to Greece as Hellas or Finland as Suomi.

Rightly or wrongly, Eire has connotations when used by the English, just as the term southern Ireland is guaranteed to enrage anyone north of Carlow and south of the border.

What with the 800 years of oppression, the wind shaking the barley and all the rest, country nomenclature is an uncomfortable topic for us. But even if we didn’t have post-colonial and political issues with it, Eire Ireland just doesn’t work from a practical point of view.

Imagine the poor fans trying to sing all the old come-all-ye’s had we qualified for the World Cup. There is just no way to make “Eire Ireland, Eire Ireland, Repubbelick of Eire Ireland” scan properly to the tune of Give It a Lash, Jack.

And it’s not like our leaders are going to follow this policy through by demanding Irish and English versions of every sign at every meeting. The taoiseach won’t order an extra-long nameplate for himself so that he can sit statesmanlike behind Parthalan O hEachthairn Bertie Ahern.

Even if he did he would merely upset the Spanish, who have long since cornered the market in having lots of names. Imagine the diplomatic consternation it would cause when Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, got to hear about it. “But I had four names first,” he’d wail.

As it stands, this Eire Ireland malarkey is simply more pointless meddling by politicians. Remember Eamon O’Cuiv deciding all signposts to places in the Gaeltacht would be in Irish only? The people of Dingle got especially riled about this, pointing out quite reasonably that it would be difficult for tourists to work out that An Daingean was where they wanted to go.

That fiasco has now ended up with the people of Dingle wanting the place to be officially called Dingle Daingean ui Chuis, which sounds ridiculous, like calling a town Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly or Jingle Jangle the Auld Triangle.

Why do the politicians bother? We were managing perfectly well with road signs in two languages and signs at European Union meetings in one language.

Apparently it’s all about achieving parity for the Irish language, but having Eire Ireland on EU nameplates can’t do much for that cause. The only thing this hoopla will achieve is to confuse everyone.

Just last week a survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found Irish people are the third most patriotic of 34 nationalities. If the government is going to start mucking around with the country’s name, Irish people (na hEireannaigh) might get flustered about what exactly they are having patriotic feelings for. Then we’ll slip down those rankings faster than you can say Hibernia. Bad enough not being in the World Cup without having to stand that too.

There was enough heartache and trouble over settling on a commonly used name for the country in the first place. Irish Free State, anyone? And if you go back far enough you’ll find there have been countless names for Ireland, including, but not limited to, Fal, Ierne, Juvernia, Ogygia and Muicinis.

We mustn’t forget all those pre-independence poets who couldn’t be seen to be writing ditties about Ireland and had to resort to allegorical names such as Kathleen Ni Houlihan, Roisin Dubh, the Poor Old Woman, the Silk of the Kine and, bizarrely, the Cluster of Nuts.

That last one is supposed to refer to a brown-haired girl, which by extension is supposed to refer to Ireland. A bad case of metaphorical overreach, but you get the idea.

The point is that we went through plenty to get to the stage where all of us — and almost everyone else — calls the place Ireland.

So enough interfering, Parthalan Bertie and pals. There’s a Dublin port tunnel to finish and lots of people still mouldering away on trolleys in hospitals. You’ve plenty to be getting on with. Ireland needs you more than Eire Ireland does.

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