Rather at the few posters on this thread who have expressed somewhat "jingoistic" opinions suggesting that the UK, in some way, can claim the moral high ground over the Irish. In spite of our long and bloody history and, in the past, our greedy and oppressive treatment of many weaker peoples.
I acknowledge that we weren't the only ones - Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Holland et al were all flagrant colonisers who exploited African, Middle Eastern, sub-continental asian and Far Eastern peoples and stole their natural resources.
There were quite a lot of Irish people (such as my dad) out there exploiting the empire. Just to mention it. You know - holding long discussions about the wrongs done to them by the Brits and pausing occasionally to shout red-faced at their native servants. To be fair that wasn't my dad but I have the men in mind. :-)
Perhaps moral high-grounds should be treated like football matches. You win sometimes and lose sometimes but everyone manages, given the power, to do some things they're not proud of later. If you can't take the idea of ever losing a "match" then you can't take the steps needed to be the kind of decent group of people you want to be.