Real Freedom comes in form of a large cheque

Barack Obama flew into Dublin last week to accept the Freedom of the City – something that was so important to him that he’d waited since 2017 to pick it up.

Still, better late than never – and while this wasn’t exactly crowds converging on College Green to greet him as in days of yore, he was back so that the city of Dublin could pay him what, over its long history, is sufficiently rare that he was joining an exclusive club of around 200 fellow Freemen and Women.

Except the former President of the United States didn’t specifically come to Ireland to collect the Freedom of anything.

He came here to pick up a very large cheque.

Because the real reason he was Dublin at all was for a night at the 3Arena where the cheapest tickets were a very reasonable twenty five quid. Although for that, you’d get as close to the former President as a moo cow would get to the moon.

If you wanted to actually meet the former President for the dearest 30 seconds of your life, that would cost you a whopping €2,035.

For that, you had a shot at a photo opportunity with the former President and you were guaranteed a seat in the first four rows at the 3Arena – and I say ‘a shot’ because there was a disclaimer on the website warning “that participation in the photo opportunity is not guaranteed” and is subject to security clearance.

That may just be a legal way of ensuring that Conor McGregor didn’t get a pic with another American President, so we can presume that everyone who forked out two big ones got their photo; for that kind of cash, they could have run to be the actual President of Ireland themselves.

The downside for them is that, while I’ve ever sat in the first four rows of the 3Arena, I’m familiar enough with the geography of it to know that, being that close to the stage, you would probably get a massive pain in your neck.

Then again, given that you’ve shelled out two grand to sit there, you may well actually be one – a pain in the neck, that is.

The real premium ticket was paid for by the taxpayer who underwrote the cost of the little do in the Shelbourne, around the corner from the Mansion House – ‘for security reasons’ – where about 30 people, including Lord Mayor of Dublin Ray McAdam and his wife Niamh were joined by some leaders of parties with representation on Dublin City Council, but not all because some had principles and objected to Obama’s record on drone strikes, deportations and US support for Israel.