I sincerely apologise and eat humble pie if I caused offence by my comment. Mea culpa.
I've seen this debate about that word before on MN, and it always ends badly. I think because there is very little fundamental understanding about irish sensibilities in the UK. Most Irish people are called Paddies. All 70 million of us worldwide. Same as English people are called Limeys.
But how would you feel if the word Limey was used to describe a Entitled Sanctimonious Dick. "He was such a Limey about that.."
You wouldn't feel so happy about it being bandied about day in, day out, would you?
People learn that terms cause offence and don't use them out of respect.
If people didn't learn, we would still be calling children with special needs all those horrible names they used to be called.
Or women called all those sexist names - and how we fight against that!
But we don't use those terms, because they cause offence.
Some terms are offensive. If someone says that they're offended, the answer isn't to look it up in a dictionary and say "there's no problem and what are you on about?", because your dictionary doesn't have it in it, or only as an aside, or is written by someone soho isn't sensitive to the issue.
The answer is to apologise for being racist, learn form it and stop using the phrase.
I've lived and worked in the Uk and I've had a lot of uneducated and surprisingly a lot of educated people show racism to me because of my Irish heritage.
I've since found out that the curriculum in UK schools doesn't include a lot about Ireland, except that there was the Irish Question, and a few rebellions that needed to be squashed. So it's no wonder that people in the UK don't know much about Irish people, their language or culture, or what they might find offensive.
So you'll have to take it as read Paddy is a racist term when used to describe a temper tantrum or brouhaha. Used in this way Paddy is a racist term. If you want to belittle that reaction and negate Irish people's experience well, someone else will undoubtedly pull you up on it in the future, and they might even be rude about it. So brace yourselves.
If you think about it, negroid is the word from which n*er is derived, but no one uses it, except those who feel they "own" it!
you don't use it because you've learned it causes offence.
It's interesting for someone like me (half and 1/4 and a 1/4) Irish English and other, to see how 'English' people think. You're so very good about not causing offence to those who look a bit different to you, but seem to have a blind spot for us Paddys. We really are divided by a common language. (Just as well we have our own 
)
All that aside, I apologise for causing offence by my post, and sincerely hope we can all get along in future.