{"id":542705,"date":"2026-07-10T12:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T12:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/542705\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T12:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T12:49:09","slug":"prodcast-its-about-being-proud-to-be-irish-proud-to-be-a-prod-proud-of-my-country-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/542705\/","title":{"rendered":"Prodcast: \u2018It\u2019s about being proud to be Irish, proud to be a Prod, proud of my country\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Simon Kingston, it was an Instagram post by a member of the band Fontaines DC<\/a> during last year\u2019s presidential election that made him wonder about the reality of being a southern Irish Protestant in contemporary Ireland. <\/p>\n

Days out from the October 24th election, Conor Deegan, the Irish band\u2019s bass player, told his Instagram audience that the ultimately unsuccessful Fine Gael<\/a> candidate, Heather Humphreys<\/a>, was \u201cthe candidate of the mind colonised by Britain\u201d.<\/p>\n

Praising her rival in the campaign Catherine Connolly<\/a>, who would go on to become President with a large majority last November, Deegan said: \u201cHumphreys embodies the old FF\/FG Anglo-Irish mentality: an Ireland reshaped in the image of Britishness, governed through the same modes of control and hierarchy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even before Deegan\u2019s post, Kingston, the son of a Methodist minister, had been disturbed by the volleys Humphreys, a Monaghan-born Presbyterian, had been facing because of her background.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, Humphreys was never really in the running to win the presidential election, but the online criticism directed towards her by a minority was a feature of the campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some went much further than Deegan, using expletives and other offensive language to comment on or abuse Humphreys, who attended Orange Order marches as a child. Her husband, Eric, was an Order member in the Republic before The Troubles erupted.<\/p>\n

Kingston, and his one-time Wesley College classmate, Dubliner David Clarke, began talking about the state of southern Protestants, an idea that has morphed since into a podcast called The Prodcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Essentially, it is an attempt to explain southern Protestants of all hues to everyone else, but also to each other. The pair are keen to stress it is not a litany of complaints.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about being proud to be Irish, proud to be a Prod, proud of my country, proud of what we have built as a nation together,\u201d says Clarke, once a St Patrick\u2019s Cathedral chorister and an original member of the traditional choral group An\u00fana.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile some elements of our shared history on this island are challenging, we \u2013 the Prods \u2013 are a really important part of the story that is Ireland,\u201d he says, sitting in Kingston\u2019s basement kitchen in London during the recent heatwave.<\/p>\n

\"DavidDavid Clarke and Simon Kingston explore what life is like for Protestants in Ireland. Photograph: Yousef Eldin for The Irish Times <\/p>\n

Kingston, who runs a consultancy firm, agrees, although he believes southern Protestants of all hues should be more vocal: \u201cAt one level, we were stung by the Humphreys case into vocalising how we feel about our kinds of Irishness. <\/p>\n

\u201cI am enjoying articulating my sense of the tradition out of which I come and its place in a bigger Irish story. Reticence has its defensive advantages, but it makes it very hard to express what you love about your country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kingston was born in Fermanagh to west Cork parents, Tom and Gillian, but the family then moved to The Braniel in southeast Belfast, where they lived until 1980, when his father took up a Methodist post in D\u00fan Laoghaire, Co Dublin.<\/p>\n

Before the Humphreys campaign, Kingston says he had believed that what he terms the days of \u201cyou wouldn\u2019t want to listen to a Prod because they\u2019re a unionist\u201d had long since drifted into the Republic\u2019s past.<\/p>\n

However, last autumn\u2019s experience led him to question that, particularly \u201cthis very strange sense that one of the reasons why she was regarded as unelectable was her religious, but, to some extent, her cultural background\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat idea that someone from a Protestant tradition \u2013 whatever that means today \u2013 is tolerable, but \u2018you wouldn\u2019t want one of them representing your country\u2019. The lid was lifted on something that we thought had vanished,\u201d Kingston says.<\/p>\n

Though working in London, Kingston maintains close links with west Cork, spending as much time as possible there with his wife Victoria, daughter Connie and son Rory \u2013 running the West Cork History Festival in August for good measure.<\/p>\n

In the podcast episodes released so far, the duo explore growing up Protestant in the Republic during the 1980s and 1990s, along with exploring Protestant contributions to the State \u2013 \u201cthe \u2018what have the Prods ever done for us\u2019 argument\u201d, as they put it.<\/p>\n

In time, they hope to expand into interviews with leading Protestants, but also with those from outside that community to stimulate a wider conversation about identity in 21st century Ireland.<\/p>\n

Protestants in the South have \u201cdone quite well by being quiet\u201d, they believe. Today, old habits have left some of Kingston and Clarke\u2019s Protestant friends uncomfortable about the idea of the two of them creating The Prodcast.<\/p>\n

With a shrug, Clarke says: \u201cA lot of our Proddy friends think, \u2018this is crazy\u2019. They are deeply, deeply embarrassed by it, while many of my Catholic friends are saying, \u2018yeah, I\u2019d love to hear more about that\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DavidDavid Clarke and Simon Kingston faced pushback over The Prodcast. Photograph: Yousef Eldin for The Irish Times <\/p>\n

He believes southern Protestants\u2019 place in the Republic\u2019s society is now vastly better than it was 30 years ago, helped in no small measure by rapid secularisation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely more pleasant than it was 30 years ago. Back then, we were different \u2013 like, we didn\u2019t play GAA, or whatever. Today, my nephew plays GAA. The first time I went to a GAA match was when I was 18.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a complete eye-opener for me, a side of society that I had never seen. Since, I think we got to thinking that it was quite nice being part of the gang, but [criticism faced by Humphreys during the Presidential election campaign] says that we\u2019re not really part of the gang.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kingston posits that Humphreys \u2013 who would have been the third Protestant head of state, had she been elected \u2013 might have been treated differently during the campaign if she \u201chad been a nice west Cork Prod, not a Border Presbyterian\u201d, though he is not convinced.<\/p>\n

\u201cPossibly, but possibly not. What was intriguing about the exchanges is that it says something about a Republic that may be facing constitutional change, that this association with the Orange is such a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Binary attitudes held by some about Protestants \u2013 that implicit assumption that many have divided loyalties \u2013 should be tackled, says Clarke, who now lives in Edinburgh but spends a lot of time in Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe inference isn\u2019t by us, the inference is by others, that Prod equals foreign, Prod equals unionist, Prod equals Orange,\u201d he goes on, adding that some southern Protestants, such as himself, will have links to English family, but most do not.<\/p>\n

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For Kingston, Irishness in the South until the 1990s meant a Catholicism defined by its opposition \u201cto the Godless, mercantilist, soulless neighbours next door, that we could endure hardship because the Republic had a spiritual quality\u201d.<\/p>\n

Today, he argues that the Republic, once a bastion of conservative Catholic thinking, has become increasingly monocultural \u2013 socially liberal this time, not conservative Catholic \u2013 but again a place where, he believes, a new conformity rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny deviation from that is not conforming,\u201d he says, while southern Protestants, particularly outside the Border counties, fear that raising their head above the parapet about distinct Protestant positions will see them \u201cpainted as Orange, or a unionist\u201d.<\/p>\n

In reality, southern Church of Ireland, Presbyterians and Methodists tend to be more liberal than their northern brethren, but they should voice such opinions, lest others assume that northern opinions are theirs too, Kingston says.<\/p>\n

Acknowledging the gulf that exists within Protestant churches North and South, Kingston says: \u201cThat\u2019s all the more reason to make sure that there is a confident espousal of the minority traditions, plural, in the South.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout that, there\u2019s an assumption that northerners are big, mad children, and that Protestants \u2018down here\u2019 are sympathetic to such views if we happen to deviate from any established view on social issues in the South.\u201d<\/p>\n

The souring of relations between Britain and Ireland caused by Brexit over the last 10 years, following the high point reached by Queen Elizabeth\u2019s 2011 visit, left its own residue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are all sorts of terrible consequences from that. But one of them is a coarsening of public conversation in the Republic about itself, and its attitude to others,\u201d Kingston says.<\/p>\n

By now, the conversation inevitably drifts to Belfast rap trio Kneecap, even if both know that the sound of middle-aged men offering opinions on the musical choices of the young rarely succeeds.<\/p>\n

\"KneecapKneecap perform at a concert at the 3Arena in Dublin, Ireland on December 16th, 2025. Photograph: Chris Maddaloni\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

They argue that the confident cultural nationalism illustrated by Kneecap and the growing popularity of the Irish language holds dangers, if \u2013 and it is an if \u2013 it trips into historically ill-informed nationalism.<\/p>\n

The image of thousands of young people chanting \u201cOoh, ahh, up the \u2019Ra\u201d at The Wolfe Tones Electric Picnic concerts is not without consequences, they argue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey [the young people] know it\u2019s somehow transgressive, but not why,\u201d Kingston says, arguing that in the case of Kneecap the band\u2019s very name is an expression of \u201cvery narrow republican supremacism\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s inviting people to say, \u2018let\u2019s make a joke out of the fact that we come from a political establishment that kept its own community in misery for 40 years, including habitual child torture\u2019, and let\u2019s see a funny side of that.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Prodcast by David Clarke and Simon Kingston is available on various platforms<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Simon Kingston, it was an Instagram post by a member of the band Fontaines DC during last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[57092,3656,9686,3408,2044,61,60,10366,43,2443,978,976,99378],"class_list":["post-542705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-brexit","tag-catherine-connolly","tag-common-ground","tag-fontaines-dc","tag-heather-humphreys","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kneecap","tag-news","tag-northern-ireland","tag-presidential-election","tag-weekendreview","tag-wolfe-tones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}