Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. Colfer, Professor Barrett, and Mr. Marshall - and no offence I am fairly sure he has some sort of letters before or after his name. I sat on the Conference on the Future of Europe and at times it was incredibly interesting and at other times it probably went down a number of culs-de-sac. There was probably an element of over-focus on Hungary and a simplistic notion that if everyone in the room agrees and somebody does not, we need to find a workaround for that. We all know there are protections as regards unanimity and while I accept that the witnesses are talking about a more streamlined Europe, there are particular dangers and fears that I have.

Professor Barrett spoke about how there is not a health competence at European level but I would say that one of the biggest arguments that can be made is that through the whole period of Covid-19, as we were able to put the vaccination system in play, there was an element of states being able to agree with one another, because it was in their interests to do so, and we were able to deliver far better. There is probably an element where some people would have said, simplistically, that it would be easier for the Chinese and the Russians to deal with these issues but it was shown that it was not. It was one of those cases where democracy worked and it is always difficult to get agreement.

I would also be very worried if we are talking about foreign policy at the minute. In fairness to Deputy Howlin, he spoke about the issues in Gaza. I will use an example. There was a statement by Josep Borrell on humanitarian pauses but in the middle of the statement it read that, "The EU condemns the use of hospitals and civilians as human shields by Hamas." My difficulty with that language - and there are questions as to who agreed this from an Irish Government point of view - is that it basically gives a green light or cover to a regime that is willing to attack hospitals, let us be clear on that. That is an issue I have. There must be protections.

Here is my single transferable speech on the European Union. If we were back during the period of austerity, people would say we could not sell the European Union no matter what we were paying people and they were thinking more in terms of they were paying quite a lot at that stage. We did not expect the element of support we got through Brexit. That was probably an eye-opener for a lot of people and it was the idea of the importance of the Single Market, the importance of the European Union, and also how complicated the world is. That has been a lesson to the British Government but it is not always great at learning from these lessons.

Obviously we had the Covid-19 period. Even beyond that, geopolitics has taken a serious turn in the last while and a lot of the notions we had have been thrown out of the window. With the difficulties the witnesses explained, we largely have been able to come to some sort of actions and sanctions regarding Russia. I have particular issues around Gaza and I know things are thrown out regarding Germany's history and what happened right across eastern Europe but I am not sure I buy that completely. I know I am slightly off topic but just in the sense that this did not seem to be the same issue in Yom Kippur when Israel was looking for European help. That is a separate point. Europe needs to get real on that and there is probably an element of an Irish Government - and if we do have particular fellow travellers, we have to come together. It is no different to everyone coming together on an issue and leaving Hungary out of a particular decision if that is what is required. I do not think anyone is particularly shocked that nobody is looking at or hoping for treaty change and referendums but if we have problems and issues in the long term that need to be dealt with, the only way to deal with them is by going to the people.

The witnesses threw out some of the realities about accession and one very interesting thing that happened in the Conference on the Future of Europe, if I think in particular of what we got out of a number of French and even German citizens, was this idea that we have particular rule of law issues and really need to get our whole house in order before we will consider anything. That was not even talking about the western Balkans or Ukraine. In the middle of this, circumstances changed with the Russian invasion and even then, it took some time for the language to be changed. It was then changed. Now we have the particular circumstances in which Ukraine finds itself and where Moldova and even Georgia have been somewhat upgraded in the last while.

The point regarding the CAP is we will eventually get to that real-world scenario of "Show me the money", and whatever. None of us want to see and do not know how a two- or three-tier Europe would work but I am not entirely sure how the passage way goes. However, we hear about the issues the western Balkans have had and what they are saying is, "Show us a real roadmap. You have held us back for too long and you were not very serious for a considerable amount of time and if you do not give us an option into the European Union." We know that the European Union with all of its difficulties has been a bastion of hope and democracy and if we do not give them that option then there will be other options. Some of the players who are already at work there will have different ideas and that is it. On some level, as much as I would never accept most of the arguments of Guy Verhofstadt, there is an element of truth that we are in an age of empires. It is probably no different than any other time in history but we just believed for a period that it was.

I will finish on-----