Your post makes me want to get off my ass and find my GGparents birth certificates so I can prove I'm "Irish" for citizenship and emigration from the US.

Where is home/your mother in Ireland, if you don't mind my asking? Dublin is probably a different beast in some ways, but when I was on a train from Cork to Dublin, I had expected to read the whole way, but this elderly woman sat across from me and we had a wonderful conversation for the whole trip.