Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to reinforce my point. The silent revolution was an attempt by the President to indicate the lack of adequate cohesion among our European colleagues, the need for everybody to move together in the one direction, and to ensure that one country out of a group was not moving in a direction that would undermine the whole concept of what Europe means. The analysis is totally incorrect.

The last point I wish to make relates to the suggestion that I have heard on many previous occasions that the war solved the world’s problems. No, it did not. What happened was that at the end of the war there was a recognition by humanity worldwide that humanity was about to obliterate itself, and that is what brought the change. What brought the change in Europe is when the European people found themselves at the centre of an appalling crisis with massive loss of life. Louis XIV is supposed to have said that he found France in its ashes. The founders of modern Europe found Europe in its ashes and with repercussions worldwide. That is what focused people then. That is what focused the vision of modern Europe and that is what we must keep going back to again and again. When we do that we will succeed.