But our system of regulation must keep up with this. If it fails to keep up, it will hold back economic expansion. We need financial market regulation that works at national and European level.

Of course the EU and member states must work to ensure that people moving from one country to another understand their obligations and their rights in areas like health, road safety and further education.

It is not viable for one country to demand a right to increase and upgrade its nuclear weapons capabilities while asking others to eliminate theirs.

The Irish Free State was one of dozens of new European democracies to emerge from the cauldron of the 1914-1918 war. It was one of the very few that was still democratic in 1939. This book shows how the steely determination of one man, Kevin O'Higgins, made this possible. O'Higgins faced down mutinies in both the Gardai and the Army. He dissolved the Dáil Courts which were a parallel system that might easily have undermined the conventional courts. With WT Cosgrave, he put through a constitution which reconciled the local opponents of independence with the new State.

Indeed, American companies make three times as much profits from their investment in one E.U. country, Ireland, than they do from all their investments in China.

We in Ireland have not been immune from the bigotry and the indifference which manifested itself in Europe this century

That's where my job comes in. Getting the E.U. and U.S. to agree.