Causes of Irish Europhilia

There are a few different reasons.

1) "Cultural cringe". Irish people are notorious for seeking the approval of outsiders. I recently read a reference to this in a novel from the nineteen-twenties, by the priest-novelist Canon Sheehan. James Joyce famously described Irish literature as "the cracked looking glass of a servant". Patrick Kavanagh said the essence of provinciality was someone always seeking the approval of the metropolis. There seems to be something in the Irish character that craves validation from outside.

2) Anti-Britishness. We've spent so long trying to define ourselves as non-British that Europhilism has become a permanent state.

3) Conformity. Many people have commented that the Irish have a powerful conformist streak. This was good (in my view) when they rapidly converted to Christianity, and persisted in Catholicism despite persecution. However, when progressivism became the reigning orthodoxy, they were just as conformist in this. Which leads to

4) Progressivism is anti-national and pro-state. The E.U. ticks both those boxes.

Of course, there are practical and financial reasons to be pro-E.U. But honestly, I think they are less influential than the emotional ones.

As for your other question, is pro-Brussels sentiment common in Ireland...very much so. But popular as it is, it's still over-represented amongst the media and cultural and political elites. There's a fair (and, I think, an increasing) level of anti-EU feeling amongst ordinary Irish people. It's hard to gauge its exact extent, though.

What is becoming clear is that Brexit will probably be bad news economically for Ireland. There are few fans of the EU here but the Brexit vote , a reassertion of British sovereignty, something we would never dare to do ,is going to affect us even more than the English.

I am amused by those who bleat on about Irish sovereignty and Irish vetoes when dealing with perfidious Albion when our real European masters have been pulling the strings for decades. The EU is determined to undermine Brexit and is delighted the Irish are the dupes who automatically assume our national interest equates with that of Brussels. We need to be coldly self interested in this affair.

When this is all over we will be still be stuck beside the Brits one of our biggest trading partners and our closest cultural and historical neighbour.

The Irish party in London has now been reduced to the DUP who are taking full advantage of England's difficulties unlike the Sinn Fein ostritches who prefer their sacred abstention dogma to take priority over the needs of the nationalist population of Northern Ireland.

As for an increase in Irish identity and separatism ... Sadly that's very unlikely to occur. We are all good Europeans now.

Why be hitched to either?

We're a small nation and economy that has benefitted immeasurably by EU membership. Unfortunately, gratitude is not a common trait amongst most human beings. For some "Brussels" now equates with the ninth circle of Hell.

Has it really benefited that much? If you look at Actual Individual Consumption, which is a much better measure of prosperity than GDP per capita, then Ireland is the poorest nation in north-western Europe, with the average household having the same standard of living as Italy, despite Italy not having had any economic growth for 17 years. Ireland has the second highest GDP per capita in the EU, but this is due to creative accounting and multi-nationals having their HQs in Ireland. In my experience, most consumer goods in Ireland are much more expensive than Britain.

ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/8065733/2-13062017-AP-EN.pdf/edd7c511-ce00-4788-ae99-7d310456d195

The only argument that really impresses me when it comes to pre-EU Ireland is the level of emigration. It seems fairly clear that people had a reasonable standard of living in the sixties and seventies. Nor did there seem to be a homelessness crisis as today. My father tells me he never saw homeless people when he was growing up.