It’s easy to forget, in the midst of all the disruption, that today’s meeting of the European Political Community (EPC) at the Convention Centre in Dublin is the largest international meeting ever hosted by an Irish Government.

And yes, it involves disruption, traffic restrictions, travel delays and street closures in the capital city because of the vast and necessary security operation. Some protests seem likely. Going on very recent experience, bomb scares – like the wave of hoax threats made against schools across Europe yesterday – will be on the cards. Public transport will be reduced and many city centre commercial outlets will be closed. Security officials have significantly increased the size of the no-fly zone over Dublin this week. The no-go zone around the Convention Centre doesn’t apply just to cars, but also to bicycles and pedestrians. The only relief is that at least the threatened public sector strike is not now going ahead.

It would be easy to get distracted by all of this kerfuffle and disturbance and focus principally on the many challenges of looking after more than 50 high-level delegations in such circumstances. But too much attention has perhaps been paid to that, and not enough to the fact that today’s meeting is not only of symbolic significance, as what some have called “a talking shop”, but that it is also of substantive importance.

The scale itself is impressive. It will bring together heads of state and governments representing nearly 50 countries, comprising a total population of 730 million people, double the population of the United States. The heads of the main EU institutions as well as of the Council of Europe, the OSCE and Nato will also be here, bringing the number of delegations to well over 50. The........

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