“French people playing hurling – I didn’t expect that,” Taoiseach Micheál Martin said on November 24, sharing his impressions mid-way through an official visit to Paris in a room packed with over 170 businesspeople from France and Ireland at the landmark Ritz hotel.  Martin said he was “bowled over” by the growth of Gaelic games in the country and backed plans to expand the activities of the Irish cultural centre in Paris, two examples of the soft diplomacy deployed to strengthen bilateral ties already reinforced by Brexit – along with the recent appointment of new consular officers in Lyon and…