Why, in contrast to so many others last week, are our leaders so reluctant to stand up to Donald Trump? Because the soft soap has melted in the heat of the new American imperialism. Simpering, sentimentality and shamrock will no longer get us a pat on the head and free pass. Myth and mist have evaporated. We have to learn to talk money.

There’s a reality that is hard for us – accustomed as we are to being grateful for Uncle Sam’s small mercies and large bounties – to recognise or articulate. It is that Ireland is no longer just a beneficiary of American hyper-capitalism. It is an integral part of it.

Here’s a staggering figure to start with: four cents in every dollar borrowed by the US federal government from foreign countries comes from tiny little Ireland. As of last November, Irish entities – investment funds, pension funds, insurance companies, corporations – held $340 billion (€287 billion) of US treasury securities. Germany holds $110 billion.

But this is only the crust on a very deep pie. If we include all kinds of financial wealth (notably stocks and shares), Ireland accounts, according to the Financial Times, for a mind-blowing $2.138 trillion of the $35 trillion of foreign holdings of US assets. That’s more than China, Germany and Spain put together. Those countries have about 1.5 billion people; we have about 5.5 million.

Now, of course, we all know that money, in an Irish accent, rhymes perfectly with funny. Much of this vast deluge of dollars is accounted for by Dublin-based investment funds who may be........

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