At the time when, just 50 years ago tomorrow, the Treaty of Rome was signed, the way towards free trade for Ireland appeared to be through a proposed European Free Trade Area that would link the rest of Europe with the new European Community - although British opposition to the inclusion of agriculture within such a pan-European scheme could have posed serious problems for Ireland, writes Garret Fitzgerald.
However, in late 1958 that scheme for western European free trade was vetoed by Gen de Gaulle, who had just been precipitated into power in France as a result of the Algerian crisis.
Thus by the time Seán Lemass became taoiseach in 1959 it had become clear that our prospect of moving from the sterile protectionism of the de Valera decades to a more dynamic free trade environment would depend on Britain reversing its anti-EC stance and applying for membership of the Community.
That membership would necessarily include a single market for farm as well as industrial products - which would involve Britain abandoning its century-old "cheap food" policy.
That would be of huge advantage to us, because in the late 1950s three out of every eight Irish workers were still engaged in farming, which was directly contributing one-quarter of our national output.
Of course at that stage agriculture's role in our economy was already declining: we had just reached the stage where the contribution of industry - manufacturing plus construction - had for the first time exceeded that of agriculture. But for several decades ahead farming would nevertheless remain an important element in our economy. Thus the boost that this sector would receive if, by joining the EC, Britain lost its power to buy Irish food at artificially low prices, would be greatly to our advantage as we set about what was liable to be a difficult transition from a highly protected manufacturing sector to industrial free trade.
Ireland's movement from a primarily agricultural to an industrial economy was finally completed in the 1990s, when manufacturing output rose spectacularly - by 15 per cent a year between 1993 and 2001 - whilst agriculture's share of national output fell eventually to less than 3 per cent of GNP.
However, after 2001-2 the volume of manufacturing activity came to a virtual halt. Since then it has been growing by less than 3 per cent a year.
Most sectors have experienced a decline in output, and only nine out of 29 have since then achieved further significant output growth - almost all of these involving foreign-owned firms.
Because of a combination of minimal growth in export volume, and declining export prices, the value of our exports of goods has fallen back, and employment in manufacturing has dropped by 10 per cent.
This reflects the negative impact upon our competitiveness of the inflationary fiscal policies unwisely pursued by the Government earlier in this decade, as a result of which our share of world trade in goods has now fallen by about one-eighth.
Thus manufacturing in Ireland has clearly passed its peak - as, indeed, had happened in most other western European countries at various points in the latter part of the 20th century. Since the start of this decade Ireland has begun to move into the third stage of economic development: that dominated by services rather than agriculture or industry.
In the past six years the value of our service exports has almost trebled, and because of the near-static level of goods exports, this has had the effect of doubling the share of our external earnings coming from this new source, which has risen from less than 20 per cent of the total to almost 40 per cent. At the present rate, by the year 2015 exports of services could equal goods exports.
Insurance and other financial services are now earning Ireland €13 billion a year - almost four times the level of receipts we secured from this source in the year 2000. Exports of computer services now bring in €15 billion a year, and other business services sold abroad are now earning us a further billion.
Service exports are now bringing in a total of no less than €50 billion a year - about 30 times as much as farmers receive for their input into the €6 billion that we earn from our exports of indigenous food.
This spectacular growth of service exports has received little or no attention from economic commentators - and there has been no indication thus far that the significance of this development has been grasped by our political leaders - either in Government or Opposition - all of whom remain fixated on the farming sector of our economy.
In this connection it is relevant that in the last decade the total number of workers engaged in the provision of business services for the domestic and export markets has doubled to 278,000, whereas the number engaged in agriculture has fallen by one-fifth to 117,000.
At this stage of our economic development, exports of services should clearly be the main focus of our economic strategy.
Unfortunately progress in the services part of the Doha Round has been unsatisfactory, and as a result the prospect of a balanced outcome from this negotiation is poor - even if the obstacle posed by US reluctance to match the EU reform package with a similar reform of its Farm Bill reduces distorting farm subsidies.
Earlier US criticism of the Irish stance on agricultural trade - there was a move to make Ireland a "fall guy" for a failure of the Doha Round - has now faded somewhat, due to US embarrassment at their own inability to move on agricultural trade distortions, which currently risk precipitating the failure of the negotiation. Unless this deadlock is broken by May, the expiry of the US "fast-track" procedure could block progress for a very long period ahead.
Given the crucial importance of service exports at this stage of our economic development, I find it surprising that this aspect of our economy has hitherto evoked so little interest, either in the Oireachtas or in the media.