Mr. Bertie Ahern:

The Deputy is correct. It was always a political process. In moving to the coal and steel agreement and then moving through the EU, all the changes that have been made over the past 50-plus years have always taken politics into account. Where did that come out of? The concept came out of France and Germany telling themselves that they could not continue to go down the road of wars. It was a political process that led to the concept of a union of countries. The political process was probably the pre-eminent issue. As time went on, add-ons were built in to economic relationships and ties. Developing industrial harmony led to more open economies where people were trading with each other and then to social issues and people having viewpoints on international issues. It all emanated from a political process and it still is a political process.

As the Deputy indicated, the politics now all over the world, not only in the European Union, is that people are trying to work on alliances because they are afraid that one of the other big brothers will move in on some of these countries. That is happening everywhere. We see it in Africa with what China was doing. I am not sure if it is doing it with the same success as it was trying to achieve but it was pouring money into certain areas. Australia, in its end of the world, is trying to get more active now into many countries in the Caribbean. This political process has gone on.

On the Deputy’s second question, you cannot just let anybody in. It has to be based on values, particularly human rights. There lies many of the problems. People must be prepared to work on the basis of democratic values as we understand democratic values. The Deputy knows – he has travelled extensively, as I have – the stretch of democracy. Regions of China will tell you they have good democratic systems because they elect local councils from the communities. Democratic values have to be democratic values as we understand them, with the rule of law. Those principles have to be there.

Coming to other things such as how to help these countries move from where they are, that is a different thing. There is flexibility in doing that. Provided that people have human rights, the rule of law and democratic values, it is possible to negotiate on some of the other issues. I recently read in a magazine about the Granada declaration, which was adopted by leaders in October last. It noted the EU needs to prepare in parallel with candidates for enlargement. It should seek to lay the necessary internal groundwork and reforms, and address key issues related to priorities and policies as well as the capacity to act. Reading through that document, which I had not looked at before, it was stated the language set out in the declaration was not easily agreed. They had a big argument about using the word “reform”. They had difficulties saying this would be any kind of reform to the European Union. The end of result of that was the Commission undertook to carry out a series of pre-enlargement assessments of the policy and budgetary implications and most member states agreed that this is where the primary emphasis should lie at present. At least they set an agenda of what should be the issue.

We took a decision and, in fairness, I think Deputy Howlin supported it. On 1 May 2004, I squared off an agreement with Tony Blair - we could not get anyone else to agree at the time - that we would open up from day one, we would do it without restrictions and we would do it openly. It was a risk at the time. The fan mail was fairly hostile on that decision. It is not only recently that those issues jumped up. It was the right thing to do. We believed, based on our own labour market and our own expansion, that it was right for us to do it. We went from 5,000 Poles to 100,000 fairly quickly, and it did not change after that. We went from only a few thousand Spaniards to, I think, 20,000 or 30,000. That was a big increase in its day but it did not overly swamp the country. In fact, it paid for a large part of the labour market we have today. In any walk of life, we can go anywhere – even around this House – and meet people from European countries who work here and are hugely helpful to the Irish economy.

Many of the other member states at the time were annoyed at Tony Blair and I because they did not want to do it. The best thing for those that did not want to do was for nobody to do it. Many of them then said they would gradually do it. Then many said they were getting illegal immigration from European countries. There were many arguments 20 years ago and some of them are resurfacing. We said that we could do it in part by setting up a complex system where you would have to get a visa. There was talk of green, white and yellow cards at the time. Maybe we would let a Polish plumber in, but not a Slovenian agricultural worker. The more that debate went on, the more my patience ran out. I said that I was not getting into that kind of bureaucratic system and that instead we would open it up on day one lock, stock and barrel. Luckily enough, Tony Blair also agreed. Otherwise, it would have created a problem. If we were on our own, it would have been a problem. We would have gotten hammered on it.

We see things in Europe. The whole thing about the Brexit referendum, which I took an active part in, was about immigration. I remember going to some universities in the UK with some Members of the House arguing the case. It was confusing. People were saying they did not want any immigration from Slovenia or the Czech Republic and we would say, “Now hold on, your law since 2004 has been that these people can come in.” I refer to the level of downright ignorance as to what that debate was. Of course, that is why they have been in the mess they are in since then on the issue, to be quite blunt about it.

Does that cover it? I think the Deputy asked something else.