It is quite fascinating, says Breda O'Brien, to observe what triggers bouts of righteous indignation and outrage, while other issues leave us unmoved.
The proposal by the EU Commissioner for the Internal Market to introduce VAT on children's clothes and shoes produces political spluttering about the cheek of the EU, trying to interfere in matters of national importance.
It may seem quaint to readers under 30, but at various times and for various reasons, footwear has featured regularly in Irish politics.
We had "well-heeled articulate women" stamp their feet over being described in that way. We had a Taoiseach who, rather endearingly, appeared in odd shoes and explained that he did so because he dressed in the dark rather than wake his sleeping wife.
Not to mention a government that fell because it proposed the taxation of children's shoes. In fact, the fall of the government was for much more complex reasons, but who remembers that?
Anyone who intervenes in the current debate to point out that the real scandal is that children's shoes are so unbelievably expensive in the first place will be accused of having lost the plot. Yet, might there not be just a tiny hint of plot-losing in the fact that there is such a furore about VAT, while at the same time, the Irish electorate greets with acute boredom a proposed EU constitution, and begs not to be bothered with the excruciating details? Eleanor Farjeon once wrote a story for children about a giant who is too big to be seen. "Not being able to take him in all at once, nobody therefore knew that the giant existed." Instead, when the giant's footsteps shake the earth, people say that it is an earthquake. When he stoops down to scratch his leg and they feel his breath, they comment on the strength of the wind. But limited as their knowledge is, it is more than he knows about people.
"For in spite of his size, the giant had no mind. His legs could walk and his lungs could breathe, but his brain couldn't think."
The EU seems to function in our collective awareness like the giant. It is too huge to be comprehended by anyone, so all that we register about it are stray and seemingly unconnected phenomena, which occasionally arouse our ire and are then rapidly forgotten.
The evidence of how oblivious we are to the real nature of the EU giant lies in the fact that there has been little or no discussion of the substance of the EU constitution.
Perhaps it is because people never grasped in the first place the significance of the mass of treaties it is intended to replace. The constitution, like practically every other treaty that emerged from the EU, is a mish-mash caused by the desire to accommodate the completely contradictory positions held by the members of the EU on everything from taxation to defence.
The EU giant is not so much without a mind, as it is driven hither and thither by the contradictory impulses of dozens of minds.
The unseemly sparring between Italy and Germany in recent times may be the most visible evidence of how disunited the nations of the EU really are, but there are far more significant underlying divisions regarding the purpose of the EU.
Some people see the EU in idealistic terms as a way to prevent recurrence of German aggression, by tying Germany and France so inextricably together that they will never go to war again.
On the other hand, others harbour suspicions that the EU will function as a bloodless but nonetheless efficient method of allowing the big states to dominate the small.
Some long for deeper integration, and derive deep satisfaction from the fact that the new constitution will mean that the EU will be a legal entity in its own right, which could, for example, in theory become a permanent member of the UN, replacing Britain and France. Given the nature of those nations, the chances of that happening are slim and none.
Some would like to see a large safety net spread for workers. Others believe that such rights are the quickest way to bankruptcy and irrelevance for the whole enterprise.
Some would like to see the EU as a counterweight to the US in world affairs. Others have no desire to see another superpower emerge that is likely to behave as badly as any other superpower. The constitution has to accommodate or appear to accommodate such utterly different positions, and the result is, predictably, a confusing mess.
Indeed, the Economist observed that the best place for the proposed new EU constitution is the bin, because they declare that it manages an "incredible feat" - far from simplifying the treaties, it makes the Union's constitutional architecture harder to understand than it was before.
The more rhetoric about European integration and harmony that is spouted, the more obvious it becomes that the real agenda is the obsessive pursuit of national interests. Our own Government's pet obsession is protection of our favourable rates of corporate taxation. Harmonisation of VAT must be resisted because it heralds a step in the direction of creeping tax harmonisation. In the meantime, to give just one example, there are creeping moves towards the harmonisation of criminal justice systems across Europe, but the Irish electorate is not at all as exercised by that.
Most European states aside from Britain and Ireland operate a system where a judge is both investigator and prosecutor. Trial by a jury of one's peers is considered a quaint anachronism.
Another vital difference is that our justice system, admittedly in many ways a flawed one, enshrines the principle of habeas corpus, which in simple terms means that a person cannot be held unless there is evidence provided that it is essential to do so. In contrast, in other European jurisdictions, people can be held for months while investigations are conducted. These are not insignificant differences or minor details.
One could multiply instances where the EU is gradually imposing changes which are neither sought nor understood by the people of the EU. Yet we continue to allow the giant to blunder on, all the while refusing to really believe that he is anything more scary than a child's fairy tale.