Noel Treacy (Galway East, Fianna Fail)

Deputy Allen said we ought to stop praising the European Union and respond to public concerns over jobs and enlargement. I do not agree with him. Fifty years of European achievement is well worth celebrating, as happened in Berlin last weekend. The EU has transformed Europe into a peaceful and prosperous place. It has also transformed Ireland. We need to remind ourselves of these gains and move on to tackle the new challenges that lie ahead. Deputy Allen blames the EU, particularly enlargement, for certain negative developments. This is a strange position for a Deputy who is pro-European. I am convinced the European Union remains the best prospect that we in Ireland have of securing a future in which the undoubted gains we have made since 1973 can be maintained and built upon.

As regards enlargement, there is now a natural pause in the process. No further accessions are planned for some years. This allows time for all of us to make the best of the 27 member state Union that exists. Future accessions will take place when a candidate country meets all the conditions for membership. In all the negotiations we have had since 2004 and since the accession of Bulgaria and Romania, Ireland and its colleagues have made it clear that all candidate countries will have to meet all the conditions for membership. I do not envisage any large-scale enlargement in the coming decades along the lines that occurred in 2004 when Ireland held the Presidency.

Deputy Crowe spoke of his party's fundamental opposition to Ireland's membership of the European Union. He called this legislation a "nightmare" and spoke of the European superstate. He used the word "nightmare" in his attack on the Bill and on the European Union generally. All I can say is that the isolationist path favoured by the Deputy and his colleagues would be a nightmare for this country if we were forced to reverse and to have to stand alone against the ravages of international pressures, global inflation, major financial decisions being taken in international headquarters and capitals throughout the world and had to compete in a market where we were totally dependent on our own resources without any support either structurally or financially from an external organisation like the European Union. Are they in denial about the vast gains we have made since 1973, many of which are attributable to our EU membership? Do they want us to return to a time of high unemployment and high levels of emigration when our best and largest export was the brightest people we had, we left this country to build up economies across the world to the detriment of our own? That would be the likely result of following the anti-EU line advocated by the Deputy and his party.

I remind the Deputy and his party colleagues that this Bill is a subject for debate, which is an honest response by the Government to the judgments of the Supreme Court. We did not ask for this situation but as constitutional parliamentarians we are all obliged to accept the decisions of that court and respond to them. Members of all parties in this House over the years have recognised the primacy of that court and the implications its decisions has for us as legislators. I have made that point time and again since 1 December last when this debate commenced in the Seanad.

Deputy Crowe used the term "coup d'état" in describing the implications of a Bill to alter the way that this State transposes its EU obligations. This is an offensive exaggeration. Some might suggest that these words roll easier off Deputy Crowe's tongue given his party's recent acceptance of the democratic principles on which this Dáil and State are founded. Deputy Crowe's intervention reveals once against that his party's politics on the European Union are at least 40 years behind the times.

See this speech in context