In preparation for hosting the EU presidency, I see the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has paired each of the 26 counties with an individual EU country. The Dealer thinks there’s some rationale to some of the pairings, while others must have been picked from a hat.

The largest county and country, Cork and France are paired. Natives of both are known to have sky-high self-confidence and a distinctive accent. They’ve unique beverages too, Beamish and Murphys versus Beaujolais and Moet.

Carlow and Luxembourg, the second smallest county and country are matched up. In the northeast and both sitting on the border of the EU, Cavan and Latvia have been paired up.

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Meath and Italy. Give either of them a sniff of a football final in the 80s and 90s and if they didn’t win, they’d be hard to beat.

Conversely, Mayo and the Netherlands share issues getting over the line in football finals. The Dutch have been in three world cup finals and lost them all, so the westerners are well positioned to console them.

Waterford’s Viking heritage sees them get Denmark, but I don’t know if they fancy the Greenland situation.