Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and his colleagues. I have a number of concerns about this. First and foremost, apropros of what Deputy Crowe said or what he read out on behalf of his party, the European Union is a unique institution and it is the only political union in the world that people want to join or with which they want to have an association agreement. There is no queue of nations wanting to join the United States, Canada or any other rich country in that particular manner. We should ask ourselves why that is the case. This is an association agreement based on mutual benefit with regard to trade. I advise Deputy Crowe that this is not compulsory and that they do not have join or apply. As a representative of the Sinn Féin Party, I would have thought he would rather celebrate the idea that a recently independent state, exercising its own democracy and sovereignty, albeit in difficult circumstances, would - taking a meaning from the name of his party - itself decide that it would like to apply and it is old enough, big enough and wise enough, and in many cases probably much smarter than we are, to decide whether the terms and conditions hit the contours of its aspirations for the future of its country.

Another factor is that association agreements are not guarantee of full membership. Ask the Turks about it. They have been a member of NATO since 1952 and a member of an association agreement with the European Union in terms of trade and association, if my memory serves me right, from 1958 or 1959. The path to full membership requires the individual vote of every national parliament, currently 28. That bridge, if we have to cross it, is a long way away and at the time probably 30 bridges will have to be crossed and unanimity on that will be required, not the agreement of a majority of the member states.

I have a concern given the difficulties we have had in the past with our overseas development programme with regard to corruption and misuse of money, some of it accidental, some of it deliberate and some it fraudulent. We saw that with our overseas development programme with Uganda and others. I am sure this is a concern everybody would have. There is an anti-European movement within our own country and within other member states and they will use malfeasance of one kind or another to denounce that this is money being wasted by Brussels. We know the orchestration of histrionics of Nigel Farage and other UKIP-type parties. The Minister might indicate what safeguards and sanctions are provided if bona fide European taxpayers' money is badly spent.

Having regard to the very fraught relationship that exists between the current political leadership in the Commonwealth of Independent States, or what we would call Russia, is there a sense that some of this could be seen as a political provocation? All these three applicant countries, as we well know, notwithstanding their independence and sovereignty on the international stage, have been treated extremely badly by the current occupant of the Kremlin. To what extent will the process of these agreements, which are coming along in a normal manner, have a negative or no impact on the wider Russian-European relationship now that the economic basis upon which the aggressive prosperity of President Putin's aggressions are being undermined by the collapse in oil prices at a level that will cause massive economic hardship in the former Soviet Union?