Yer But Ner But Yer But Ner

Of all the overused phrases in Hiberno-English (Please God, God bless, Ah for God's sake, God almighty! Holy God!), the term, "in all fairness" beats all, in all fairness. It's the Irish for "excuse", don't you know. It's "God loves a cynical optimist" as Gaeilge. It's the local slang for "Cover your ears, I'm about to wheedle."

Which is why you'll hear it sandwiching such gems as "We had a great May" when you complain about the flash floods in June. Or, "We can barely care for our own autistic kids" when someone says that sending a child with learning disabilities back to Nigeria wouldn't be a very decent thing to do. Or, "He was only a coke dealer" when shock is expressed at another shooting of a young fella in the wilds of Dublin.

It's a little known fact that the first "in all fairness" was used by St. Brendan the Navigator shortly before he said, "the back of a whale can look very like arable land to a man half-blind from drinking his own piss". At least I think that's when the phrase was coined. Either that or on the arse of "there's more to life than orgies and eating funny mushrooms" by a certain St. Patrick just before he cursed us with Catholicism. And then it was used through the ages by the likes of St. Bridget ("Ah, lads, that was my new cloak, in all fairness"), Oliver Cromwell ("That side of the Shannon is great rock-growing land, in all fairness"), Michael Collins ("Six counties off the top isn't going to do much harm, in all fairness"), Damien Rice ("in all fairness, a whinging bastard in the hand is worth two in the scrapheap") and Bertie Ahern ("Ah, no one likes doing paperwork and keeping records and all that shite, in all fairness"). Made popular by persecuted pioneer, Ronan Keating, in all fairness has spread across the land like a plague of flat caps, becoming more Irish than the Irish themselves, and proving the number one tourist attraction in this fair country. Having just pipped "you're a nawful eejit" to the post, clearly.

It's served us well, though. Foreign readers! If you want to sound like an Irish person, you have to do a lot more than shout "Begorrah!" from time to time. You have to sound like you're apologising half-heartedly for saying it. So the next time you're coming out with a doozy like "the cat was old anyway" or "I wouldn't have ridden that wan into battle" or "sure, you'll collect on the insurance", remember to splice in a little "in all fairness." You might think it won't make a weak excuse any more plausible, but you underestimate the Irish appetite for half-arsed justification. You never know when Holy God's going to call you home. In all fairness.