Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

As Ireland is no longer weak, it is time it rid itself of the colonial hangover of evasion and duplicity in political life, writes Fintan O'Toole.

ACTUALLY, FORGET about the Eurobarometer surveys and the EU's collective psychoanalysis of the Irish after the Lisbon debacle. If you really want to understand the nature of the contemporary Irish psyche and the way it has knocked the European project off course, think Carlsberg. I don't mean to suggest that, when we voted on Lisbon, we were, as the old codger in The Fast Showused to say, "awfully drunk at the time". I mean rather that there's a set of Carlsberg ads tailored for the Irish market that could have been for the successful No campaign.