I have sometimes wondered about that myself, when it refers to people - though there's no grammatical reason against it, I suppose. I found about a dozen examples, eight of them referring to people (but, curiously, neither of your two, Labhrás. I don't know whether any of them are by native
speakers - probably not - and over half of them definitely aren't. To save time, I'm only offering two examples for now, which I've chosen specifically. I'll give the rest later, when I have time.

- Is é an forainmneach firinscneach uathu é a usáidtear in abairtí mar seo a leanas d'ainneoin ainmfhocal baininscneach a bheith iontu: is é mo thuairim, is é an aidhm. - GGBC. Doesn't refer to people, of course, but GGBC is not without some authority.

- Ba cheart túr dóchais a bheith ionainn do phobal na Gaeilge. - This is from a speech by the Irish President to a gaelscoil. Whatever authoritativeness it might have had is destroyed by the mistakes in the following two excerpts from the same speech:

- ...Ruairi Mac Easmainn... is iontach go bhfuil scoil lán-Ghaelach anseo i gCiarraí a bhfuil ainmnithe ina onóir and Tá siad ag mealladh h-iad siúd atá ar bheagainín Gaeilge

Meanwhile, in a another speech by a different Irish President there's this: Is céimeanna iad leabhair a thugann deis duit bheith mar an duine is fearr is féidir leat. While I don't think 'an duine is fearr' is a good translation of 'the best' in this particular context anyway, my question is about the use of 'mar'. Obviously, you can say 'bheith ar an duine is fearr' and 'bheith mar chara ag duine', or 'bheith mar bhall de ghrúpa' for example, but I hadn't seen 'mar' used with the superlative before. I googled around and found more examples, some from reasonably "reliable" sources. It seems wrong to me - and The Brothers don't mention it...

I used http://corpas.focloir.ie.



It isn't from GGBC (at least I couldn't find it there) but from CO (so with less authority )



Isn't the meaning here rather verbatim: having "túr dóchais" in us?



Interesting. Kind of contamination, perhaps.
Or a slip of tongue or bad speech transcription ...

Oops! You're right.



That did occur to me, but "There should be a tower of hope in us" sounds strange;"In us (there) should be a tower of hope" sounds a little less strange, and "We should be a tower of hope"
sounds the least strange. To me at any rate.

I'd think it is tuar dóchais, a "sign of hope", because "tower of hope" doesn't make much sense .

In English, a person can be "a tower of strength" - kind of like a 'crann taca' - so I thought "tower of hope" might be an extension of the metaphor, translated literally into Irish as 'túr dóchais'. I didn't know 'túr' is also a variant spelling of 'tuar', so the meaning is clearly " sign of hope", as you say. Though that 'ionainn' makes the translation sound a bit awkward to my ears.