The Kilt's use in Irish Nationalism

[CMcG]

So maybe there should be an Irish Tartan Registry, which I guess would be a lot smaller.

Although what would happen to tartans with no historical basis? E.g American/Canadian ones, or more recent ones made here?
In a previous post I mentioned football club or university tartans which are very recently designed. Should these still be allowed on the Scottish Tartan Registry?

I support the Scottish Register of Tartans and am quite pleased that they accept all manner of designs. Whether or not a tartan is officially recognized has more do with the governing body that the tartan purports to represent than it does the register i.e. if a football club, university, county, province, city, country, etc recognizes a tartan, only then it is truly official.

In the case of the Ulster tartan, I don't think it has been inducted into law as the official tartan of that province. It certainly has wide recognition and in this case may have become semi-official through usage. We had a similar case in Canada with the Maple Leaf tartan that was widely used as our national tartan, but only last year was legally made official.

... I'm under no illusion of my nationality. Born and raised in Ireland, and while I've been living in Scotland for a while, I'm still Irish.
To be honest, I like the look of the kilt, and enjoy wearing it. So instead of wearing a Scottish tartan, which I believe I have no right to, I wear a tartan representing my country/province.

Seeing as you identify as being Irish, you can go further than just wearing an Irish tartan. There is actually a whole range of options for kilting up in Irish style that parallel the Scottish style: Kilkenny jacket instead of Argyll, Brian Boru jacket instead of Prince Charlie, caubeen instead of Balmoral, Donegal tweed instead of Harris, shamrock/claddagh/harp motif items instead of thistle/lion, etc. Much to some people's dismay (apparently), the Irish kilt is quite well established in the retail world.

While the kilt seems to be more commonly worn by people of Irish ancestry outside of Ireland than on the Emerald Isle itself, I don't think other Irish kilt wearers are confused about their nationality either. On the other hand, I think modern identity is often more complicated than that and I also think that it depends on how the question is asked; if a Canadian asks another Canadian (especially in Canada) what their nationality is, they most likely mean their ancestral heritage. If a non-Canadian asks a Canadian that (especially abroad), they probably mean what is their citizenship.

Citizenship is clearly defined by the passport that one carries, but is not the be all and end all. There is also one's current and past neighborhood, city, county, and province/state. Unless one is adopted there is also family history and ancestry. As a Canadian, I am keenly aware of the fact that culture is both acculturated and enculturated, so it doesn't necessarily have to exactly reflect the other things I just mentioned and could also include elements that have nothing to do with one's heritage but were acquired along the way!

For many people these days, identity is bound to be plural and people will attach value to these variables in different amounts.

Here is just a silly, hypothetical example:

Person A is sitting next to person B at a large international airport
A: "Hi there! What's your nationality?"
B: "I'm Scottish."
A: "Neat, I've never seen a Scottish passport! Would you show me?"
B: "Actually I have a British passport."
A: "Oh, I see. So you live in Scotland?"
B: "No sorry, I run my business out of Hong Kong."
A: "But your family is in Scotland then, right?"
B: "Well... my family name is Scottish but my parents actually live in Wales now and most of my extended family is in Ireland. My mother is Irish you see."
A: "Uh... you must have been born in Scotland then?"
B: "Wrong again, I was born in Canada... but we moved back when I was two and I went to primary school in Inverness!"
A: "Ah, I get it. You grew up in Scotland?"
B: "After primary school is when my parents moved to Wales. But I later went to Uni in Edinburgh, though I then got my masters in the States."
A: "So you're really Scottish?"
B: "Yes!"