John Joe Patrick Finn

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 Wes_Wanderers wrote:

 Hotlips_Hoolahan wrote:

 Wes_Wanderers wrote:

 You Tell Me wrote:

By that logic Declan Rice and Jack Grealish are Irish. Or Martin Keown or Steve Bruce or Nathan Redmond.
But they're clearly not. If he decides to become involved in our setup at some stage in future he will of course be welcomed and will be considered Irish at that point. Otherwise he's a Spanish kid playing for Spain.

Well actually, it does not. Most of the people you have mentioned have Irish grandparents, not parents, so they may not be on the foreign births register. If you are on that register, then legally you are Irish whether you like it or not. That is a simple fact. Again though, being legally Irish does not mean you will play football for Ireland. With Finn the situation is still ambiguous, there is no real evidence either way who he will play for apart from one tweet that he is part of a Spanish under 17 camp, which I can not really see any other source for.

Getting into a grey area there. That's like saying James McClean is British. Irish people have an increasing habit of claiming people as their own regardless of how strong an attachment the person has to this country. It's a habit the British used to be derided for when it came to athletes or celebrities who came out of this country.

Finn is as Cameroonian, French or English as he is Irish. And that's without getting into the fact he's native Spanish.

The likelihood of him being good enough to play for Spain, France or England is infinitesimal. But he equally might not want to go through the rigmarole of playing Intl football for a nation he has no infinity to as a compromise. 

Legally speaking, McClean is British. However, in McClean's case, we know his personal identity is solely Irish, so we bow to that. 

In Finn's case, none of us know his personal opinions, so we can only go on the legal imperative, which is that he is Irish. He also happens to be Spanish, Cameroonian etc, this is perfectly congruent, we do not live in 1800 and you can be more than one thing if you want.

No one is "claiming people as Irish", in fact in this case you are doing the very opposite, you are excluding people from being Irish. You have no reasonable cause to do this, as the only evidence we have at the moment is the legal fact that Finn is Irish, and until the man himself says more on the matter it is inappropriate to assume anything more or less than that. Whether or not he will play football for Ireland is another question entirely, and it is not inextricably linked to him being Irish or not.