BOOK REVIEW: Ireland and the European UnionBy Brigid Laffan and Jane O'Mahony Palgrave Macmillan 303pp, £22.99
'MY ONLY counsel to Ireland is that in order to become deeply Irish, she must become European."
- Tom Kettle, 1910.
Kettle's apparently paradoxical advice goes to the heart of Ireland's troubled relationship with the EU. Our debates on Lisbon and Nice have been underpinned by the simple assumptions that, as we become more European, we must inevitably, progressively lose our Irish identity; or that, as we increasingly engage with our partners and share decisions with them, we inevitably dilute our "national" sovereignty.
It is the logic of the zero-sum game that denies the real truth about the EU, that the whole can be, is, greater than the sum of its parts, that in combining with others we create new possibilities of sovereignty, real new abilities to shape the course of events that are continental in scope.
As we pause for breath ahead of what now appears to be an inevitable second Lisbon referendum, Brigid Laffan and Jane O'Mahony provide a welcome opportunity to step back and take the long view of the content and complexity of that relationship. Not least because the much-discussed complexity of the Lisbon Treaty is a function not so much of the intentional obscurantism of drafters, as some would have us believe, but precisely of the complexity of that relationship, whether at institutional or political level.
The evolution of the institutional architecture of the EU over the years, broadening with new members as integration and the acquisition of new competences continued apace, has created a living organism that is difficult to describe or comprehend. Ironically, that may be largely because, unlike a classic bureaucracy, the union's institutional structures are permeated through and through with points of contact and leverage for representatives of member states, from ministers to MEPs, from officials and diplomats to county councillors, interest groups and social partners. The purpose is to create a system of checks and balances that aspires to accountability. In practice, of course, this imperfect democratic aspiration comes at the price of transparency.
The authors draw the balance sheet of Ireland's engagement with the European Economic Community (EEC), then the EU, with great lucidity and authority, from preaccession as a peripheral basket case through, as emerging star pupil, to the simultaneous crises engendered by the demise of the Celtic Tiger and rejection of Lisbon. Above all, it is an account of the interweaving of the narratives of modernisation and the transformation of Ireland in the last three decades and of the Europeanisation of our politics, economy and institutions.
The authors not only answer the "What did the Romans ever do for us?" question - in terms of cash and the shaping of the liberal economy, of the protection of agriculture, of a transforming social and environmental policy agenda, of the evolution of our foreign policy and our relations with Britain, and of the EU's contribution to peace in the North, to mention a few - but provide a detailed analysis of how Ireland and its representatives have engaged strategically and institutionally with the union to shape policy.
Can a small, peripheral country without much economic or any military clout avoid being marginalised and avoid ending up being dragged along in the wake of others? The answer is yes in the authors' important final chapter, which explores both the Brussels realpolitik of coalition and consensus building and the State's related strategic approach to institutional and treaty reform.
The emphasis in the latter is not driven by any ideological federalising agenda, whatever Anthony Coughlan and others might suggest, but by a pragmatic assessment of the way changes may affect the evolving balance of forces between large and small states and between competing European institutions.
Ireland's approach to treaty reform, not least the unwieldy Lisbon compromise treaty, reflects that experience, and the treaty must be seen in that broader light of the real dynamics of this State's experience. In charting and exploring that, Laffan and O'Mahony have made an invaluable contribution to the ongoing debate.
• Patrick Smyth is Foreign Editor ofThe Irish Times