Freddie Sayers went to an EU conference for young people in Ireland — and no one turned up. Euroenthusiasm is not groovy
Imagine a huge celebrity wedding before any of the guests have arrived. A romantic Irish castle, a giant marquee with ruched egg-white lining and silver-birch detail, flurries of organisers talking into radios and making last-minute adjustments. The County Clare police department, excited as never before, have committed 720 officers to the weekend-long security operation. There are roadblocks for miles around, four motorcycle outriders for each of the VIP guests and groups of fluorescent jackets guarding every deserted woodland lane. I have been background-checked, searched and scanned and I wave my security pass benevolently through the window at checkpoint guards as my laid-on black Mercedes limousine pulls up to the white marquee.
‘It’s quite a to-do, this.’
‘Quite a to-do about noth’n,’ the driver laughs back at me.
Such was my arrival last weekend, not at a celebrity wedding, but at the debut event of the Irish Presidency of the EU at Dromoland Castle in the west of Ireland. S