ABSTRACT
The Irish Defence Force has not yet developed much of a heritage. Since the creation of the Irish Republic (a neutral state) its operations have been limited to United Nations operations and home defence. The British Army now contains just two explicitly 'Irish' regiments: the Irish Guards and the Royal Irish Regiment and two cavalry regiments maintain a sense of Irish identity within amalgamated structures (Hallows, 1991; Harris, 1999). However, these contemporary parameters of Irish military identity provide little indication of the rich historical record that Irish soldiers have achieved over the centuries, nor of the different manifestations of this heritage. The close relationship that was developed between British regiments and their specific regional recruitment territories (within the British Army's regimental system) has created, historically, a conscious and explicit mutuality between urban or rural areas and 'their own' regiments. Arguably, this pattern was equally significant within the context of the Irish regiments although the recruitment areas tended to be much bigger and culturally more varied than those in Great
Britain were. Significantly, something of a change in the perception of military heritage
is evident, both in Great Britain and in Ireland, raising questions about the way it is, andshouldbe, represented (Miller, 1998; 2001), and the potential for its changing use, relative to transformations in the recognition and value of this heritage.
