Given the amount of international attention focused on Ireland on March 17 — or some version of Irishness — perhaps it’s also a good day to take stock generally.

As we enjoy the various festivals associated with St Patrick, it is no huge conceptual leap to consider the overt contradictions at play: This year’s celebration of the country’s most famous immigrant coincides with a growing amount of bigotry in Ireland, an increasingly toxic prejudice against outsiders.

Whether your yardstick is the introduction of the loathsome Tommy Robinson to Ireland, or recent shameful attempts to intimidate women and children at various centres around the country, the whole notion of "a hundred thousand welcomes" is under serious scrutiny.

When President Michael D Higgins cited “a poisonous xenophobia, new and recalled, has taken hold in so many places”, he didn’t need to specify that Ireland is one of those places. That is self-evident.

The contrast with the outlook in previous decades could hardly be more marked. There was a time when many Irish people knew that emigration was their only option, which led to an outward-looking attitude; if Kilburn or Woodlawn was a person’s ultimate destination, then they knew well that being open-minded and available to different experiences in a foreign country was the only possible position to take.

Now there is a change. A reflexive fearfulness about newcomers is clear in Ireland, an insular negativity based on thinly disguised racism. Such attitudes would come as a particular surprise and disappointment to Irish people who went abroad to help others, from Mary Elmes to Mother Jones.

That change is not a rhetorical exaggeration. Readers need only contrast the welcome given to people visiting Ireland today to celebrate, with the welcome given to many of those arriving here on the other 364 days of the year.