As I hope my story makes clear, I am taking a long historical view on this. I have no doubt that the EU has been very beneficial to Ireland for the vast majority of our 40 years of membership, and not always necessarily in the ways most noted by other observers.

For instance, I would regard the EU's influence on Ireland's social and human rights development as more important than the oft mentioned fiscal transfers as part of the agricultural, structural, cohesion and regional funds. As Ireland has now become a much more (relatively) rich country, I also don't have a problem that those fiscal flows were on the point of being reversed when the crisis hit.

That the past few years have been so negative by comparison is of course a major disappointment to me, and, I hope, not a harbinger of things to come. However, at this point in time, if one were to draw a balance sheet on Ireland's membership of the EU, the experience would still have been overwhelmingly positive, and it is on those positive elements I hope Ireland and the EU will build into the future.

It will, of course, require a realignment of political forces within the EU, and a defeat for the current Austerity ruling ideology for this negative trend to be reversed. However some of what is happening is also due to a failure of the neo-liberal model of capitalism more generally, and also due to peak oil and a relative decline of Europe within the world economy - and thus not the sole fault of the EU. Indeed I see the EU as being the main factor that can help a small state like Ireland to address these larger geo-political and economic challenges.

Most importantly, from a historical perspective, the EU has helped to consolidate an unprecedented period of peace in Europe, current riots in Greece and Spain notwithstanding. Let's not lose sight of that in our despair at the current generation of political leaders.

Index of Frank's Diaries