When France's President Francois Hollande called on the Taoiseach in July, he had no problem acknowledging Ireland had specific problems about Brexit.
"I do recognise there is a special situation here for Ireland. It's a special situation and it has to be found a special place in the negotiations," he said.
It is worth taking at face value - but also has to be seen in context. It is also worth weighing against initial reactions from several EU capitals to British Prime Minister Theresa May's declaration that immigration control trumps single market access, as Brexit negotiations open next spring.
Most intriguing of all was the reaction from Malta, as it is among the few member states smaller than Ireland. It is, in fact, the one with the smallest population in the EU, at about 430,000 people, or 10pc of this Republic's total.
The Maltese Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, is about to take over the EU's six-month rotating EU presidency in January, and he gave a very engaging interview to the prestigious Brussels magazine, 'Politico'.
Muscat did not believe there would be much room for sentiment. Britain must end up worse off in EU terms than before the British voted to leave.
"Any deal has to be a fair deal, but an inferior deal," Muscat said. "Even the most pro-UK countries . . . say you cannot have your cake and eat it."
The issues of immigration, or free movement of EU citizens, cannot be separated in negotiations from access to the world's biggest tariff-free market. Muscat also made interesting points about negotiation methodology, and appeared to diverge from the Taoiseach's repeated view that "democratically elected" governments will take precedence over the "unelected" EU Commission officials.
For the Maltese leader, the Commission's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, must be taken seriously and the governments' representatives, the Council, cannot engage in too much detail. Equally, the European Parliament's nominee, former Belgian premier Guy Verhofstadt, showed the Parliament had to have a strong say.
All of this is just to say that Ireland's "special case" must compete with all the other requirements. Spain, for example, has 300,000 UK citizens resident there, many elderly and requiring care. Who will pay in a post-Brexit world? Indeed, who'll fund care to the one million-plus UK citizens living across the EU?
None of this is to say that Ireland should do less than fight its case to the maximum. Back with the Maltese premier, who was asked how he felt, representing the smallest EU population at leaders' summits. "I don't have an inferiority complex. If you have something meaningful to say, you might carry the day," he said.
Irish Independent
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