Except the vast majority of people in Ireland would not accept being of Irish descent as Irish . I don ' t want to get up on my high horse and start saying we ' re this unique cultural gem or something , not at all , I just think we ' re the odd ones out in that a man who came from the US as a teenager , became a comedian and learned our language is now considered pretty much Irish , while you can have a book full of ancestors , if you grew up in the states you ' re American . National identity here is probably defined more by shared experiences than blood or birthplace . Black people are not ethnically Irish in any sense , and not culturally either really . But there are plenty of black Irish nowadays . They go to school , they have our accent , some speak Irish . But we ' d never see ourselves as a country of immigrants , in fact most people probably are in favour of assimilation . And so anyone can be Irish , but only in Ireland .