Enough of this nonsense

THE lay citizen, desperately trying to inform himself and herself, will be under-impressed by the latest round of the Berlin/Paris “pas de deux”. So, too, will the markets, but they at least will be able to make money on their pessimism.

When the euro was established, the warnings were clear, (but ignored), that it would not work unless it was backed by strong institutions and procedures of a federal character — as the term “federal” is understood on mainland Europe, in the US and many other states across the world. Not as it is “misunderstood” in the Tory gentlemen’s clubs in London — and slavishly aped here in Ireland.

We never had “economic sovereignty” in this tiny player. Never could. But when Sean Lemass became Taoiseach in 1959, he was able to facilitate the adaptation of the mindset behind Arthur Griffith’s understandable but delusional and hugely wasteful dream of literal self-sufficiency. And, of course, his own Lemassian pursuit of the same goals in the 30s. The irony was that we actually gained massively in our real capacity to exercise genuine “sovereignty” on the ground — enabling us to choose how we wanted to be ourselves.