It is perhaps as well that no referendum on the EU constitutional treaty was held in Ireland this year. This is not because the eurosceptic arguments have become any more persuasive.
But when the public becomes unsettled, whether by the World Trade Organisation pressures on Irish agriculture and the looming closure of the beet industry, or the fast-and-loose exploitation of liberalisation by Irish Ferries and certain other companies, people are disinclined to confer further authority on the institutions directly or indirectly seen to be driving these developments, without more reassurance.
The reality remains that opting-out or semi-withdrawal from an EU moving forward would allow even less influence on our external environment.
The Irish economy, characterised by headlong employment growth fuelled by migration, continues to hurtle forward on a dizzying roller-coaster. Though it is an exciting ride, many are nervously clutching their seats.
With no past form to guide us, many fear that disaster must be round the corner, whether in the form of a long predicted crash in house prices, or the wholesale outsourcing of jobs, or the demise of agriculture as we know it, or corporation tax nemesis, whether from an EU hellbent on tax harmonisation or the US tax authorities tightening up on transfer pricing.
As Minister for Finance Brian Cowen finalises his budget, unabated revenue buoyancy gives him a freedom that many of his European colleagues, struggling to remain within the agreed 3 per cent deficit ceiling, would envy.
As against that, their citizens would in many instances point with some pride to the superiority of their social services, which require much further improvement here over a multi-annual period.
French newspapers rather disconcertingly classify Ireland as one of the "Anglo-Saxon" economies. Commentators in Northern Ireland, on the other hand, contrast unfavourably what they have to spend on roads with the very ambitious infrastructure improvements already well under way here.
Despite worries about the future, 2005 will be a bonanza year for Irish farmers, with the single farm payment coming on top of the overhang from last year of the headage-based subsidies. Future years will be leaner.
British EU presidency attempts to unpick the 2003 reform which guaranteed CAP funding till 2013 have not been well received, with the Taoiseach making strong attacks on the honesty of Tony Blair's arguments in the matter.
Unlike France and Germany, Britain has never been forward in promoting solidarity with poorer member states, concentrating instead on the defence of the Thatcher rebate. This is one reason it has difficulty exercising leadership in the EU, another being its refusal to participate in the euro zone.
Inevitably, distrust of British intentions on the EU budget has spilt over into the WTO negotiations. Farmers fear that, in EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, it is the fox being put in charge of the hencoop, with his Northern Ireland record providing little reassurance.
A further cause of alarm is the clinical and bruising way in which in a few months the EU Commission has succeeded in taking out the sugar industry in Ireland, like nowhere else.
Divisions among farmers and between farmers and Greencore did not help the Government's fight. Whereas in most Cap negotiations Ireland and France are on the same side, on sugar they were on opposite sides.
The lesson is that a blocking minority that does not contain one of the three major powers, Britain, France or Germany, is not likely to be effective or consistent in its opposition. Spain, Poland and Italy, even together, are no substitute.
A lot of propaganda by Oxfam and others, attempting to induce guilt about supporting Irish farming, glosses over the fact that the sugar reform hurts the interests of the poorest countries, whose access through guaranteed quotas at existing EU prices is being removed.
The beneficiaries are large producer countries like Brazil, and financial service providers in the city of London, who hope to gain access to the underdeveloped Brazilian market.
With one battle over, there are more important ones to come. The issue for farmers as well as Government is whether we fight to defend the viability of our core agriculture sectors, where we have a comparative advantage, on broad economic, social and environmental grounds, and attaching proper weight to security of supply; or whether we allow ourselves to be progressively marginalised or bought out with a generous well-negotiated compensation package in the case of sugar.
If reasonable framework conditions are let go, we run the danger that practically all farming, pace former IFA president Joe Rea speaking only about sugar, could become increasingly a sentimental exercise. The Irish countryside, and life in it, would deteriorate from every point of view, despite innovative rural development policies.
With Ictu backing, the Government took a robust attitude to trade unions, official like ASTI, or unofficial like ILDA, who tried to drive a coach and horses through social partnership. It would be good to see employer organisations show the same energy in defending social partnership, when Irish Ferries or any other company management systematically flouts the spirit of partnership.
The thought of Irish Ferries manager Eamon Rothwell regaling some future management conference with the tactics that won the dispute is like Dickens's ghost of Christmas Future. One certainty is that the last people to be outsourced and replaced by cheaper eastern European personnel will be Irish top management.
Our recent success and prosperity as a nation has been dependent on a good deal of give-and-take, on compromise and reaching consensus, rather than confrontation. We do not need a return on either side to the spirit of 1913.
In EU deliberations and at home, Ireland needs to turn more of its attention to finding effective ways of protecting minimum standards and the values of public service.