Over the last decade Ireland has come to realise what a small player it really is on the world stage. Our entry into the euro went as planned but as time has gone on we have found ourselves having less and less of a say over important economic decisions affecting us. With peace firmly established in the North the US's interest in Ireland has diminished, and the UK has become more and more focused on the continent since it first announced it was joining the euro zone in the early tens.
Our most sacred national assets have gradually been wrestled from us by multinationals - all our telecommunications companies, our four largest financial institutions, our airline, our airports and our postal service are now in foreign ownership. While many of their owners are European, it is reinforcing a belief that Ireland is now nothing but a European sub-region.
Less than four in ten of the electorate bothered to vote in this year's general election because they believe there is little that our government can do to decide our fate.
It has not bothered today's youth however. On the contrary, they are more mobile a group than ever before and less nostalgic about the home turf. There is little difference between life here or life in Australia or Spain to them - other than the weather. Indeed the competition for our brightest youth has seen them offered incredible wages overseas, while our strongest youth have also been attracted abroad by cheaper housing and the relatively inexpensive cost of living.
Unlike the enforced emigration of the last two centuries, this time the best of the Irish are leaving for the best of opportunities. In their absence however euro-scepticism is beginning to take hold with critics asking if we really are any better off as a nation now than we were before we joined the EEC.
Are we not in fact weaker both socially and economically?