A VERY senior Commission official, involved at the highest level of European politics since 1982, said simply on Saturday that it was one of the best presidencies that he could recall.
The point is worth making, although it may sound like an exercise in blowing our own trumpet - and why not, just a bit? - because comments like these have been made so widely to this correspondent by diplomats, officials and journalists from around the Union that they simply have to be put on the record.
But there is an important European political point to this too about the relationship between small and large states, to which I will return.
To cap the success, Irish officials and ministers, the official said, had read the Dublin summit's mood with such precision that their final draft conclusions needed virtually no changes. That fact alone will have given senior Irish diplomats the buzz of pleasure that a bridge player gets from a grand slam, bid and made.
Grey-faced with lack of sleep stretched to the point of exhaustion, and then beyond, more than one of the dozens of diplomats, officials, and politicians, who have worked with enormous skill inside the presidency monster for the past six months will today breathe a long sigh of relief as normal life, whatever that may be, returns.
For what? Three major steps on the road to European integration, no matter what Mr Major might say - on the preparations for the single currency, on the process of reforming the Union treaties, and in turning the painfully cumbersome EU system of co-operation in justice and home affairs into a functioning arm of the Union. Each alone would have been an achievement to boast of.
The Union has taken another step on the path to the single currency in approving three major packages of post-euro structures and regulations. The message sent out this weekend by the agreement on the Stability Pact is not just that the euro will be launched on January 1st, 1999, but that it will carry a Bundesbank quality mark - its management will be handled under procedures that reduce to the minimum room for the interference of spendthrift politicians.
The procedures for imposing fines on wayward euro participants reflect, the Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Mr Yves Thibault de Silguy, described over the weekend as "semi-automaticity . . . as automatic as the treaty will allow".
There are other hurdles yet to be crossed, of course. Germany's hard-heated finance minister, Mr Theo Waigel, has no intention of letting just anyone in from the start, even if they have been able to massage national statistics to make the criteria in the key year of 1997. Bonn has made it clear it will want to see evidence of a "stability culture" before admission and has Italy and Spain firmly in its sights.
But that argument's for January 1998. Sooner than then the Dutch, who on January 1st take on the presidency mantle, must transform the Irish outline draft treaty into a treaty proper. The deadline is Amsterdam, next June. And the differences between 14 member-states and one of their partners are even more difficult.
It is fair to say, as British spokesmen point out regularly, that there is by no means unanimity among the other 14. True. But it is also clear that what differences there are can be resolved in the course of detailed horse-trading. That is simply not the case with Britain. Any treaty acceptable to the British Tories would be regarded as unacceptable failure to the rest.
The problem is whether the Dutch foreign minister, Mr Hans van Mierlo, can tactically afford to press ahead to get a broad agreement of 14 in the hope that a British general election produces a more malleable British government. In a sense Mr Tony Blair was the ghost at the Dublin feast.
Indeed there is every indication, that on the key issues a Blair government will be able to do a deal - recent Labour comments have suggested a willingness, to sign up to the Social Protocol, allowing it to be incorporated into the treaty, a willingness to extend majority voting, a sympathetic approach to flexibility. A deal is conceivable even on incorporating Schengen's passport-free travel into the treaty on the basis of a British (and Irish?) opt-out.
But the Dutch will have to handle the issue with care as a 14-1 reality could prove rich election propaganda material against Mr Blair. To delay too long, however, may leave too little time to get a deal.
Should the British government not last until May, a snap special summit may help the process on its way.
One issue that will not be easily resolved, thanks in part to the Irish presidency, is the question of the presidency system itself. It's impossible now to make the a priori case that small countries can't handle the presidency Ireland's performance compared to the recent German and French half-hearted efforts, and the Italian fiasco, is simply in a different league.
This is partly to do with national pride - the presidency assumes a central place in the preoccupations of small countries eager to fly their flags on the world stage. Finland, for example, whose presidency does not happen until 1999, has had an official working in lveagh House for the last six months, just watching.
For the large countries, perhaps, the presidency is more of a bureaucratic inconvenience. They have less to prove. But these are the people suggesting that perhaps we should have a new system of team presidencies, allowing the bigger counties to take up the burden more regularly.
Others make the case that larger states bring with them the baggage of major vested interests that make them poor honest brokers in the tortuous business of consensus-building. It was a point made by Mr Quinn on Saturday morning - the Stability Pact deal was done between France and Germany, but it was brokered by Ireland, Luxembourg, and Holland.
The Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, made plain on Saturday his intention to fight all the way in defence of the presidency system. "We cannot do without it," he said. "The knowledge and understanding that we acquired, which our public service acquired, is essential in fact to enable us to be a fully communitaire member of the Union in the years ahead."
MAIN POINTS:
. A Stability and Growth Pact to enforce financial discipline among EMU participants.
. A framework for a new Exchange Rate Mechanism to link the euro with non-euro currencies.
. Agreement on how to enshrine the legal status of the euro.
. Designs of the new bank notes.
. A major package of new police and judicial co-operation.
. Agreement to involve the applicant countries of eastern Europe in the fight against crime.
. Major declaration on employment.
. Endorsement of Irish presidency's outline draft for a new EU treaty as a working basis for the treaty-changing IGC negotiations.
. Declarations on Middle East and Serbia.
