The applicant countries are like the Ireland of the pre-EEC era in so many ways. They have recently thrown off the yolk of foreign domination, they have struggled with a lack of infrastructure and dire poverty. It should remind us of the Ireland of the 1950s with its soul-destroying poverty, the Ireland of Angela's Ashes, the Ireland of the gombeenman and of the emigrants' wakes. These were dark times, and not just in economic terms. This was the era of censorship, of public policy being subservient to the will of Maynooth, of the scandal of the Mother and Child Scheme, an Ireland full of towns and villages of squinting windows and, yes, of the Magdalene laundries.