The Dáil should be a place of real debate, not a place where deputies read pre-prepared speeches. By Eoghan Murphy.

Europe Day is an opportunity to celebrate the EU, but also a chance to turn a critical eye on the project,  Eoghan Murphy argues

Europe is changing and we’re changing with it, quickly. There is little time to pause and catch one’s breath. Europe Day offers us an opportunity, but we need more such opportunities, and soon, if the people of Ireland and Europe are to continue with the European project.

Reading Commissioner Olli Rehn's comments today, it would seem that we're suffering from European 'group think' in relation to our budgetary strategy. Either they're getting it from us or we're getting it from them, but the lack of critical examination of the €15bn target over four years is worrying. Particularly as this large figure only recently slipped into the discourse, almost without question.

What does Olli Rehn know? He has backed the government's four-year budgetary strategy.

It may well be a decade or more before we can fully appreciate the historical significance of events unfolding in Ireland today. We're just too close to it all.

The same could be said for the ever-shifting international context in which we find ourselves.

Just look at Europe. It's not a coincidence that as we come to contemplate a new reality nationally (a new dimension of sovereignty even), the state of the union is also changing. This is where the common market and everything that has since followed has brought us. And, I suppose, we it.

It's a busy time for those working in the international relations arena. A new session of the United Nations General Assembly convened in September and leaders and ministers flocked to New York to hold a series of meetings on the fringes of the main event. A good opportunity for individual countries to get a lot done with so many key players in one place. Unless of course you were discussing nuclear weapons.