The bunting is still being folded away. The speeches have been delivered. The applause has died down. Another round of EU celebrations has come and gone, and once again we were treated to the familiar liturgy: Ireland the grateful recipient, Europe the magnificent benefactor, the relationship between them a story of unblemished generosity flowing in one direction … from Brussels to Dublin.
But gratitude, when it becomes compulsory, begins to look less like a virtue and more like a form of political management. And Ireland’s relationship with the European project has for too long been managed rather than examined. Before one considers the structural funds and the Single Market, it is worth pausing on a debt of a rather different kind. A civilisational one.
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