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Most of the piece is concerned with future challenges facing Europe and Ireland, and Dan identifies many of these. Sometimes there are no easy answers to the challenges facing Ireland. For example, politically the new Hanseatic League is the obvious home for the country...
...but my own view has always been that if the Euro is to work, we need more EZ-level fiscal instruments to help smooth out regional shocks. So IMO Macron is closer to being right on EZ reform than Rutte et al.
There will be another crisis some time because there always is. Look at the economic and political damage the last one caused and ask yourself what the next one might do. We don't even have common deposit insurance (though in fairness Ireland supports this as far as I am aware).
Similarly we have a major interest in an open trading system as Dan notes, but we also share a global interest in combatting climate change. How will we respond when border carbon taxes come onto the agenda as they surely must if the US et al free ride on others' climate efforts?
Dan is also right to identify security issues as one where Ireland won't be able to keep the head down forever; the Balts have shown us solidarity and we owe them the same.
And he is absolutely right that we need to become much less insular in terms of news coverage and policy debates. There is an agenda there in terms of the media, academia, think tanks, the civil service, and government.
And I suppose that one worry is that the Irish political system won't be able to focus on these broader issues while dealing with the huge political and economic problems Brexit -- especially a no deal Brexit -- will cause us in the immediate term.
