The Ireland That We Dreamed Of is the title commonly given to the St. Patrick's Day speech made by Taoiseach of Ireland Éamon de Valera on Raidió Éireann on March 17, 1943. That year marked the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge), a group promoting the Irish culture and Irish language, and in recognition of this anniversary, de Valera set out his vision of an ideal Ireland:

The Ireland that we dreamed of would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live.

The speech in recent years has been seen as archetypical of de Valera's backward-looking, traditionalist view of an agricultural land controlled by the Roman Catholic Church where women were in a subservient role. It is often referred to as the comely maidens speech, even though the actual words used are "happy maidens".