Morning View: Dublin should share blame for IRA chanting

Simon Coveney said there had clearly been a mistake made by the Irish female team. "I think it's acknowledged and there's a very sincere apology made. And I hope we can move on from that now."

It isn't as simple as that, sadly.

Mr Coveney is a leading light in Fine Gael, a party which once had some of the most vociferous critics of IRA terror, such as the ex taoiseach John Bruton.

You would hope such a party to be so opposed to an IRA narrative taking hold across nationalist Ireland, particularly among younger people, it would be going into overdrive against it.

All the more so if women players actually representing the Republic engaged in a song that is widely seen as a celebration of Provisional IRA violence.

Imagine if the Northern Ireland women's team sang a song that celebrated the modern UVF.

It would not only be repellent, in a team that proudly has players of mixed backgrounds (like the Northern Ireland all-male team that went to the World Cup twice in the 1980s), it would cause uproar.

Such singing would be proof that NI is a 'sectarian statelet'.

So an apology from the Irish players for real sectarianism, while very welcome, does not address the growing nationalist anglophobia and sanitising of IRA terror.

Official Ireland, with its stance on legacy and on Brexit and appeasing SF, shares some culpability for this.

Thank goodness there are still two teams, so that NI footballers can play the game outside of an Irish republican culture, and represent their small but distinct country with pride.