Dublin City Council can’t afford to welcome Ireland’s Olympic heroes home

How come we can't do this for our heros and yet we find the money to invite the Queen of England,her husband and now her son and daughter-in-law ????Something stinks here!!!

Does it really have to cost so much? A simple parade? It seems Ireland could use a parade, about now, to cheer up a little. I agree with hermitTalker, all the Olympians should be celebrated for their hard work. The Medals are melted minerals - nice to look at, but hardly the value of any person. Your weather may call for rain, so let your athletes shine.

If you have the money....party if you don't have the money you don't...simple enough or do you think it is up to someone else to pay for your party?

Here in New York if we had an occasion like this there would be no question of finding the money. Politicians can always find money if they really want to.

"We honour those who did their best". That's nonsense, Hermittalker. If it were true, how come the Irish didn't have a Welcome Party for their soccer team a few weeks back, the one that lost all its matches and scored a total of one goal? Though I guess the Irish would have had a party if the team had even tied one match.

Dublin had plenty of money to welcome the queen of England though didn't they? It would almost be funny if it weren't so sad.

The report in the Sunday UK Times of Ireland today is that Mr Taylor said he would not allow her to be in the Dublin Parade, so it was cancelled, and she will be honoured in Bray as will Mr Nevin in Mullingar as report. We honour those who did their best, sacrificing and giving up free time for four years, regardless of results - winning is not all about medals in any enterprise in life.

@Woundedknee: Ireland sent 66 athletes and secured 5 medals: 1 gold, 1 silver and 3 bronze. Over 200 countries were represented and Ireland finished in 40th place ahead of countries like Argentina, India, Belgium etc. Indeed some countries didn't even win a single medal, despite being represented by larger teams. So why shouldn't we acknowledge the achievements of Team Ireland?

Ah well if it gets woundedbollix/georgyboy to show his American arse to the world its not all bad.

"Olympic Heroes"? Let's get real here. If you look at the picture above, which shows most of the Irish team, bear in mind that most of the athletes you see won nothing and many of these performed poorly. This is not to diminish the countless hours of preparation both losers and winners put in over the past years, but I suspect most of the Irish athletes don't think they have much to celebrate. There's something truly crazy in the Irish psyche that goes into swoons of hysterical overreaction to sporting events, celebrating in a most exaggerated and embarrassing way. I remember there was a vast "Homecoming Celebration" a decade or two ago for an Irish soccer team. Maybe 100.000 people turned out to welcome home a team (actually Ireland was not home for most of the players) that hadn't even won a game in the World Cup. Grow up, Irish.