“Loss of sovereignty?

Do they prefer their sovereignty to be in the hands of the speculators and markets?”

These were the type of questions incredulous people working with the EU were asking over the past week as the country tore itself apart over philosophical questions it had never addressed in the good times.

Politicians, commentators and the public all behaved naively in the process. Normally negotiations for money that can result in a run on the country’s banks or make borrowing even more expensive are done in secret. We saw it in the Greek case. Their prime minister and his finance minister denied again and again they were looking for a bailout. They had to deny it for longer than Ireland since there was no bailout fund at the time.

With the Irish it was a bit like swearing on your mother’s grave, when one said it would be tantamount to giving away our sovereignty and another minister said the reports were “fiction”. They can always claim they were doing the equivalent of crossing their fingers when they made their statements. All were very careful in the words they chose and what exactly they chose to deny. They were right: no request had been made and we were not in negotiations.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan gave an idea of the choice and range of language and terms during his interview with RTÉ yesterday. Last weekend his officials were engaged in discussions – the Government was not. The consultations with his fellow ministers were not to request aid. It was just to discuss the situation.

The discussions concluded on Saturday and he was going to formally apply – after the cabinet agrees. Strange bit of sovereignty there: tell the nation on radio you intend to apply and then ask the cabinet to agree?

It was especially strange in light of the fury Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan endured when he confirmed a bailout for the banks was on the cards. He was almost accused of treason by some politicians. But the truth was that he needed to get the message out once the nation learned there has been a run on our banks – not by the small domestic customers but by the multinationals.

Let’s face it. The country is a basket case. It needs a good psychologist to help get its head in order. It needs a new Constitution – the kind that would allow children’s rights to be included without a national convulsion.

It needs a truth commission to look at why we allowed sectors to hijack our country and its economy for the past nine decades; it needs political, economic and international relations education; it needs a new kind of government that believes sovereignty rests with the people; and it needs a new kind of citizen who believes politics is important.

Like most of the rest of the EU, it needs to wake up to the fact that protecting sovereignty is not about excluding partnerships, but protecting your democracy. And now that we share a common currency it means sharing economic sovereignty to prevent speculation and recklessness.

No doubt it will take a few more failures to learn this lesson, but the eurozone can’t afford many more after Ireland. Would it be too much to hope that after this debacle Irish politicians, rather than rattling an outdated nationalist drum, would be in the vanguard fighting for European sovereignty? Now that would make sense to the Chinese.