Since 1972, when we decided to join the EEC, few debates on European affairs have attracted much attention here - except, of course, when it looked as if money might change hands. Or someone was about to be nominated to a highly paid job.
We've claimed to be good Europeans; boasted of our connections with the Continent - mostly through medieval monks and the Wild Geese - and invited French, Austrians and Spanish to look on us as cousins. But, unless agricultural, regional or structural funds were in prospect or we were challenged on neutrality or social affairs, we paid only casual attention to conferences of EU heads of government or ministerial councils.
The dead hand of indifference was on reports intoned to the Dail. Reports followed by dutiful statements, not discussion. So it took commentators and public by surprise when Sile de Valera spoke in Boston of her support for enlargement, her fear of closer integration and her hope that Ireland would "exercise a more vigilant, a more questioning attitude to the European Union".
And what did she mean when she said "directives and regulations agreed in Brussels can often seriously impinge on our identity, culture and traditions"? That the bureaucracy in Brussels didn't always "respect the complexities and sensitivities of member-states"? What examples could she offer? And in what areas did we need to exercise a more questioning attitude?
When she sought a debate was she also making a point in a debate already in progress inside the Cabinet? Mark Brennock, our political correspondent, raised the question with officials and reported the reply: "To say there is a debate among ministers on Ireland's role in the EU would not only be an exaggeration . . . It would be untrue."
I doubt if it's the whole truth. Of course, ministers are discussing where Ireland stands on enlargement, integration and the role of small states in preparation for the EU summit in Nice in December. But there's another crucial debate, on the way we run our own affairs. It's about the role of government, taxation and how to secure outside, largely US, investment; it's about social partnership and individualism.
It is about the EU, since it proposes a choice between European social democracy and American individualism; and, as Mary Harney reminded readers of this newspaper on Wednesday, the belief that Ireland is "spiritually closer to Boston than Berlin".
The most striking evidence of this spiritual closeness is in our tax system which she contrasts with other EU states, still wedded to "an outmoded philosophy of high taxation and heavy regulation which condemns millions of their people to unemployment".
Ireland, however, took the American way: "We cut corporation tax rates. We cut capital tax rates. We cut personal tax rates. And what happened? The number of people at work surged; the number of people out of work plummeted."
But there's a price to pay for corporation and capital tax rates that are among the lowest in the EU; for income tax cuts that favour the better off. And the price is paid by the old, the poor and the sick; by people on fixed incomes or in search of a home. By people who are told about the value of choice and have none.
Spending on public services is close to the lowest in the EU and, with many who are employed in poorly paid, part-time or insecure jobs, the need for better health, welfare and education services is greater than ever.
Ministers' statements need to be decoded. When they complain about centralisation, more often than not they have the American ideal of small government in mind. And when they talk about bureaucracy their target is regulation in any effective form. But no one should imagine that that man of the people, the arch-populist Bertie Ahern is dismayed by their arguments. He led the way in a highly significant interview with Shane Kenny on RTE Radio last November.
Like Charlie McCreevy, Mary Harney and their colleagues, Ahern favours the American way of life, but not the healthcare proposals or the campaigns for racial equality. What he and the others are talking about is the ugly US of George Bush's new world order. The choices on offer were suggested this week in two discussions on The Last Word - one in which Maureen Gaffney and Dan McLaughlin discussed housing; the other featuring Ruairi Quinn and Bernard Connolly on the de Valera speech.
Maureen Gaffney, who presides over the National Economic and Social Forum, pointed out that £27,000 a year, or a married couple on £38,000, now has no chance of buying a house in Dublin. And they're earning too much to qualify for local authority housing.
Her argument is that, with prices going up by 20 per cent and incomes by little more than 5 per cent we need more coherent policies, a national housing authority and more information since no data are available on which to plan housing for another five years. McLaughlin of ABN-Amro believes the market will solve - is solving - the problem. In a few years price increases will be down to single-digit figures (the decelerating rate of acceleration) and we'll all be talking about something else.
In the meantime the number of houses being built is increasing annually - 49,000 houses are being built this year. And what's wrong with people who buy houses in Dublin having to move outside? The argument is between State intervention and letting the market do its work. And the McLaughlin thesis has a lot of support among commentators who use jargon of the new right with zest.
To use an expression which Eamonn Dunphy seems to have borrowed from the Eurosceptic Connolly, what we need at all costs is to avoid "the vortex of statism". Quinn - and for that matter any politician who gives a tuppenny damn about this State - can't afford such nonsense and wouldn't be forgiven for abandoning its people to the marketeers as the Government means to do.
dwalsh@irish-times.ie