Mr. Bertie Ahern:

If we look at the background of this in the EU context, there was a charter of fundamental rights. I cannot remember what year but it was while I sat on the European Council so it was probably the year 2000 or sometime like that. This was the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which the British Government fought tooth and nail. It was not just the Court of Justice of the European Union. This was nothing to do with Ireland. The idea of a charter of fundamental rights was something the British Government opposed. It had its charter and believed its charter was the way to go. I do not know if we ever ended up with a European one but if we did, I would say it was probably watered down because of the British Government's huge opposition. I recall those debates. The British Government was quite stringent in its opposition to what were fairly basic things on which none of us would have much disagreement.

The bill of rights I spoke about earlier was not as extensive as that. The British Government has an ideological position on these things. As the Deputy knows, they still say on the Court of Justice of the European Union that it is not that they are for or against a court of justice; they just claim that their one is better. I know we will have difficulties with that.

On higher education, one thing that is really good now, and has been for a number of years, is that there has been much collaboration, co-operation and integration of universities. As the Deputy knows, because she deals with this all the time, they fight for resources but they have much collaboration. One good thing was that when we brought EU funding into the university system, that kind of forced them to collaborate and integrate their efforts, which I think is good. It is also very beneficial on an all-island basis. Some of the work they are doing on the Constitution now is being done between the universities North and South, so those are good developments.