Authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter describe the song's lyrics as "clumsy (yet well-intentioned)" and comment that McCartney fully exploited the "'hip' cachet" resulting from the radio ban in his print advertising for the release. They view the song as an unwise choice for Wings' first single, given the relative failure of "Wild Life". When compiling the "" greatest hits album in 2001, McCartney had intended to include "Give Ireland Back to the Irish". Following a terrorist incident in London that year, however, he acceded to EMI's request to omit the song, recognising that its inclusion might be viewed as a gesture of support for the IRA's use of violence. Kevin Rowland, a songwriter of Irish parentage, applauded the release in a 2020 interview: "In this club, they normally played soul music, which you had to learn how to dance to, if you wanted to dance with a girl. And suddenly ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’ comes on at the end of the night. I told my parents about it, because the room erupted. I realised everyone there was like me: second-generation Irish."