Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I agree, Chairman. How does one follow that? As always on European affairs, my colleague, Senator Richmond, is very much on the nail. I fully agree with his point on the need for Europe to find a good public relations company and to stop allowing people to knock Europe constantly. I refer to the eurosceptics or the clowns that brought about Brexit, and I make no apology for calling them clowns. During one of the great announcements they had they said they had succeeded in getting a Brexit vote. As the camera pulled away from the spokesperson, it focused on a little sign on the wall, which said this building had been funded through the European Union or whatever.

We need to understand that decisions made in Europe are made by a collective. They are made by the Councils of Ministers and the European Parliament. We have representation on the ground and we need to support it with a far better public relations machine than we have at the moment. I agreed with Senator Richmond on that.

My vision of a Europe of the future is very much is in line with the youth of Ireland. That is a Europe that is more socially aware and a Europe that is more in touch with the citizen on the ground and less concerned with the economics, although I appreciate that if one does not keep an eye on the pounds, shillings and pence, to just keep our British friends in the equation for the moment, the European project will fail.

We are now moving into a very dangerous time because we are losing one of the major contributors to the European project. Everywhere one looks there is demand for more funding. Everybody wants more funding and we are going to be working with a much tighter budget. We have some serious challenges ahead.

I very much appreciate the ambassador's views on Brexit and the support that is indicated in his document. However, there has been some discussion recently, because of deadlock and the inability to get the British to move on, that maybe we should park the Northern Ireland issue and bring it back during trade talks. I would hope that the French Government would say "No" and that the Northern Ireland issue must be solved before we engage in any trade talks. That has been the position of Europe until now and I sincerely hope that is its position going forward.

The European Union has an obligation to protect 1.5 million people who are entitled to Irish citizenship and who will be geography separated from the European Union following Brexit. That is the 1.5 million people living in Northern Ireland. We have met small business people in Northern Ireland. One particular haulage company comes to mind that has 100 trucks on the Continent and six people working in a tiny village in the very north west of Ireland.

He has had one of his main contracts for many years. He was called over to Holland to meet with the contract company and he was told that from March 2019, it will no longer be able to use his company because of Brexit. This is the truth behind Brexit and this is what it will bring to the people in the North of Ireland. This man is going to relocate his business to the Republic of Ireland and there will be a loss of six jobs. Six jobs is not a whole lot but in a tiny village, the loss of six jobs possibly affects 30 people and has a detrimental impact on the local economy. That is something we have got to watch.

I agree with the witness said that Europe must be stronger going forward with 27 than it currently is with 28. It must be stronger, not as strong as it is currently. That is really important. I am a little concerned that some of the big brothers, Germany and France, are inclined to be a little blasé about the future of Europe. The attitude seems to be, "Everything will be fine, as long as you do it our way". We have to move away from the notion of trying to centralise Europe. My colleague, Senator Richmond, mentioned the word "tax". If one wants to see the Irish scurry from Brussels, keep talking about tax. France does not exactly tell it as it is where corporation tax is concerned. It has various different rates and outs. Let us just leave the tax issue where it is, and let us not scare the horses in this part of the country.

The ambassador mentioned defence and the phrase "integrate our armed forces". Ireland has long claimed to be a country with neutral status and there is no way on God's earth that the Irish people would agree to any form of European army. However, the second part of that paragraph of the ambassador's speech deals with European intelligence and closer ties between intelligence services. I have been calling for some time here in Ireland for the appointment of a director of national security because I believe that throughout the European Union, as is true in the UK and USA, if we are to defeat terrorism, we must do it through intelligence and good policing.

One of the things that baffles me is that there is a great move towards a European army. Having been a soldier myself, we all have a lot in common. We wear green uniforms and we drive big, heavy vehicles; one's right arm will always have a rifle or machine gun at the end of it. Policing is different and I cannot understand why there is not a greater emphasis on policing and the establishment of a proper European intelligence service. That organisation should be integrated with the United States intelligence services. The days of land wars or terrestrial wars are gone. We now fight wars through information technology. Cyberspace is probably the most dangerous place in the world to be right now. Some 40 companies a day are attacked in Ireland. If one wants to build European defence based on what we in Ireland would call security, I think we would get full co-operation in Ireland. If one wants to build a European army, however, with all of us wearing boots and green uniforms, driving tanks and armoured personnel carriers, one simply will not get that past the Irish people. If Europe is going to have some sort of security service, then all 27 must be members. It cannot be opt-in or opt-out, so we have to find a security system that does not involve the appointment of an army.

The ambassador spoke about the migration challenge. I have visited Pozzallo in Italy and I have been involved in the migration issue for some time. We are not going to stop the migration issue by putting up borders. All they will do is find other ways around and keep coming. At the end of the day, people are desperate. They are living in the most horrendous circumstances in North Africa or parts of Bangladesh, India, the Middle East or the Far East. They all have TV sets. They sit down to watch the television and they see what appears to be a very luxurious lifestyle in the West. Who can blame them for wanting to come? The Irish have made an entire history of people travelling to other parts of the world for a better life, so who can blame them? However, Europe must take a stand.

Europe has stood idly by where corporations are concerned. In this country, we had a major t-shirt manufacturer in Donegal and a sportswear manufacturer in County Meath. The firms relocated, in the first instance to Morocco and in the second instance to China. They went there because labour was cheap. They could pay 20% of the cost of labour in Ireland. The products have not become cheaper at the shop-front in the high street, so we must assume that these companies are making super-normal profits. If one wants to talk about tax, that is where we should be going after them. Instead of forcing unfortunate people to take this horrendous trip across the Mediterranean, we should be investing in North Africa. I do not mean through some of the cowboy regimes there. We should have non-governmental organisations, NGOs, on the ground who will build schools and develop infrastructure. We should be encouraging our companies to locate in Africa, but we must distribute the profits they are making. The ambassador made a point about the information technology business, and how firms can locate off-shore and avoid taxation. We need to look at that very carefully.

The ambassador mentioned that every country should have two languages at least. I was quite taken aback some time ago in Helsinki when I was being brought around a school by a 12 year old boy. He stopped, looked at me and, in perfect English, said: "I am terribly sorry, Senator, I forgot to ask you. How is Ireland coping with the crisis?" I looked at him and asked him, "Which crisis is that?", and he replied, "the economic crisis". I said "Well, we are recovering slowly", and he said: "I thought that, I heard that". I told him his English was extremely good and he thanked me. I asked him whether English and Finnish were his only languages but he said, no, that he also spoke Russian and Swedish. He said he had a little German, but his German was poor. If ever I felt an absolute idiot standing beside a 12 year old, I felt it that day.

We have a problem in this country with the teaching of languages. French has been taught for many years in a textbook style, similar to what one will find in the teaching of Irish at second level. I disagree with my colleague, Senator Richmond, on third level. I am very proud of our third level institutions and the efforts they put into delivering language-based programmes. However I would encourage the ambassador to take a leaf out of the German Embassy's book and start promoting the language directly in schools. It had a roadshow going around the country, encouraging teachers and bringing them into the family, as it were, by organising exchange programmes for them. It is still going on, if I am not mistaken. I have called for teachers in training in Ireland to spend time abroad. If I was training to be a teacher of French, then I would go to France for the second part of my training, while trainee teachers in France, who are hoping to teach English, would come to Ireland. The European Union is about sharing that sort of resource. I would really like to see something like that done.

I know that I am pushing my luck here, Chairman, but there are one or two other things that I wanted to mention. I agree with my colleague with respect to transnational elections. What is the French government at? The ambassador knows well that with the French and German populations, others would be squeezed out of the parliament in no time at all. If something like that were to be done, it would require some sort of weighting system. Being honest about it, as Senator Richmond said, the people of Cork would have a huge problem with not being able to elect their own Munster-based MEP. Let us leave well enough alone, and that also applies to changing the structure of the Commission. We really cannot play with that. It really spooks the horses in this country and feeds the anti-Europe attitude.

The final issue that I want to mention is the Single Market. I have been watching the Single Market since we entered the European Union, and we seem to have been very good at putting pricing structures in place for many things. One of the places we have failed miserably is in the pharma industry. I mentioned earlier that quite a lot of our older citizens now go to the Canary Islands once a year to fill their prescription for the entire year. I was talking to a man recently who told me he buys his entire year's supply of blood pressure tablets for €11.90 in Spain, in the Canary Islands. The same drugs cost him €120 in Ireland. Where is the Single Market?

The pharmaceutical companies are being offered a population of how many millions of people in Europe but we force Ireland to negotiate on its own. We need to take a position in every single part of the market where we are talking about delivering to an entire community; we do it for beef and milk, so why not do it for drugs? The big pharmaceutical companies have all of us scared.

I apologise for throwing so much at the ambassador but I really appreciate him coming here. It is great to have our friends from France here. I look upon them as big brothers or sisters who are here to help us go forward. My big brother used to make me polish his shoes, so I hope they do not end up with similar ideas. Let us be equals.