Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The President was asking for the Deputy.

On the European constitution, the issue is that 15 countries — the figure will soon be 16 or 17 — have ratified the constitution. France and the Netherlands have strongly indicated their positions. The Netherlands have said they will not return to the matter, while France said it would in certain circumstances, but it did not outline those circumstances. It said it would seek renegotiations. Obviously, a country could come back, as Ireland did, and we got the Seville declaration, which changed some of the issues from our point of view. If somebody was to come back with that kind of arrangement for something that was important to their economy, it would be examined. Hopefully that will be what happens. If somebody wanted to totally renegotiate the European constitution, that would put back the project for four or five years. The work on the convention started in 1999 and ran until 2001, while the convention continued for two or three years after that. It would create a major difficulty for the Union for the next ten years if that happened.

If somebody tries to cherry-pick and take out those aspects they like and which suit them — there are those who would like that, too, although not many in number — that is the worst of all. They would just take out parts that would suit their own interests but would move away from all the balances that were in the constitution. I would certainly be totally against that. If France or the Netherlands say there is some important issue for them that they need as an annexe to the agreement, I do not see that as a great difficulty, depending on what it is. We cannot predetermine that. However, if somebody wants to start on the constitution again I am totally opposed to that because I think it would be unworkable. If somebody wants to cherry-pick, I would be even more opposed to that. That is the Government's position. As I told Deputy Rabbitte, I do not think that debate is going to happen until 2008. We will not return to that issue.

I have already said that we support a services directive with safeguards to ensure there is not a race to the bottom. It has been agreed by practically all groups — there is consensus — that the amended directive, which is being considered by the competitiveness council, takes into account the key issues. As I told Deputy Kenny earlier, we will have to await what will happen in that debate, which will continue for much of the summer, on the issues under consideration by the competitiveness council. The services directive has proper balances to protect our interests and is not against the long-term interests of workers in Europe. That is what we have argued for throughout this process.

The major issue at the EU-LAC Summit was not resources. I attended the two sessions with the Latin-American Council and took the lead in one of those debates. The concern of the Caribbean countries in particular and smaller countries generally was that the European Union should help them. They have major difficulties as trade liberalisation has affected many of their crops, while climatic change has affected their land base. They are under severe threat from global warming and other issues. They genuinely require support and need Europe to interact with them on trade and infrastructural matters. Their big complaint about Europe is that even when we designate resources for them they are supplied over too long a timespan to get the resources in place quickly. They have a fair point in that many of those countries are small with low populations and they need resources swiftly from Europe.

We supported that line and many of those initiatives emerged from the Irish EU Presidency which did this work over two years ago. The initiatives were in the 2004 agreement but its implementation has been very slow. President Barroso undertook to examine why these delays occur and why more progress is not made on these issues. That was the countries' central complaint, although they are fighting other issues with multinationals at home. The European Union has nothing to do with those strategies, however.

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