Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

I wish to share time with Deputy Ó Snodaigh.

I am a former spokesperson on European affairs and I have had the honour and privilege to represent Ireland at European Councils. I am also the chairperson of the Irish Alliance for Europe, an organisation representing all political parties and the social partners, which is dedicated to achieving a "Yes" vote. I am pleased to follow the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform because he has assured the House, about which I am delighted but not surprised, that the common "lawists" of St. Stephen's Green have at last a Minister who is prepared to recognise the positive benefits of both the common law and civil law traditions. That has been a difficulty for many people in the past who were not trained lawyers, including myself.

The Lisbon treaty represents five years of concentrated work beginning with the Laacken Declaration and the convention that preceded it where for the first time a treaty of reform of the Union's institutions was formulated, not by an intergovernmental conference comprising civil servants and politicians but by a much more representative body comprising members of national parliaments, the European Parliament, social partners, governments and prospective Union members. The constitutional treaty was defeated by the French and Dutch but it was ratified by 18 other member states, which is often ignored. The Lisbon treaty is the constitutional treaty in reverse. A total of 95% of the provisions of the treaty were contained in the constitutional treaty. Commissioner Wallström, who is responsible for communicating information about Europe, was challenged by a stern commentator on this when asked what was the difference between both. She was asked if the reform treaty is 95% the same, why it was being proposed again. She responded that scientific research proves 95% of our DNA is the same as that of a mouse but that is not to suggest there is no difference between us and mice.

The Lisbon treaty, therefore, is different in a number of respects and it is the only treaty on offer. A better Europe is not around the corner if Ireland votes "No". There is no suggestion that if we could somehow force people back to the drawing board again, we would achieve an improved treaty. Patricia McKenna and others have made this point. The treaty is plan Z, not plan A or B, in implementing the operational pillars for decision-making. Some people will say they will be made to vote again and another referendum will be held if a "No" vote succeeds.

However, the past 20 years must be put in context. When the Maastricht treaty was trundling through negotiations before being referred to member states, the Europe in which we lived was a different place from the Europe that emerged following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. When Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, it comprised nine members. The number increased to ten when Greece emerged from dictatorship and it was followed by Spain and Portugal. However, four sophisticated and prosperous states — Austria, Sweden, Finland and Norway — decided for various reasons not to join the Union. Only when the Berlin Wall came down did a new geopolitical landscape open up. Nobody predicted that not only would the wall come down but communism would collapse and the bipolar superpower world, which we had all grown up with and took as a given, would disappear. As a consequence, we had to consider a new Europe that, unforeseen by any of us, could potentially be reunited in a way none of our generation had experienced.

We have been struggling with a 20-year project and not just the constitutional and reform treaties. Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Since then, we have struggled with how to consolidate the Union in legal terms under the Treaty of Rome and the European Court of Justice while, at the same time, co-ordinating foreign and justice and home affairs policies, maintaining the sovereignty necessary for nation states and ensuring the integrated co-operation required. The House and the public should recognise the treaty is the conclusion of a particular project. This is the fifth attempt to finally put in place a constitutional arrangement for the Union, which makes it fit for purpose in the 21st century.

The story of the Union has two parts, one of which is the history of the 20th century and how Europe was continually at war. As Deputy Pat Breen said, three generations, if not more, continuously went to war against each other. If the Irish people think we were neutral in this particular set of conflicts, they should walk into any Church of Ireland church in the country and look at the plaques on the walls. They will see that generation after generation of Irish people fought, Protestants as officers and Catholics as foot soldiers.

It is the same in most countries. We have been engaged in every war Europe ever fought going right back to Fontenoy. To suggest that somehow or other we stayed out of wars is a nonsense. It is only that reconciliation in Northern Ireland has enabled us now to validate and recognise the history we share and for some families to come out of the closet and state they had relatives who died honourably on behalf of small nations, as many did in Flanders.

The history of Europe is in two parts. The 20th century version of Europe is how to deal with the problems which borders create, such as the divisions of nations and peoples, the antagonisms, and the excessive nationalism which brought generation after generation to war against each other with the ensuing slaughter. Perhaps the worst victims were not those who died, but those who survived. What the European Union did in the 20th century was to remove the problems of borders and create an internal market, a single currency and a space in which we could get on with our own business.

This is the history which belongs to my generation. My 13 year old son sees Adolf Hitler, Napoleon and Julius Caesar in the same timeframe, as history. It is of interest to me because I was born a year after Berlin was liberated by the red army. However, it is history to my children and my grandchildren and to subsequent generations.

The second part of the history of Europe is the history of the 21st century, which is how Europeans can cope with problems which do not recognise borders and how they can combine their strengths and confront those issues which do not recognise frontiers, custom posts or border police. These include trafficking of women and children, drugs, crime, armaments, climate change and negotiating with strength with the new globalised economic powers of India and China, not to mention dealing with the declining empire of the United States whose currency is in freefall and whose institutions need to be radically re-internationalised. The settlement at Bretton Woods which was designed to construct a new economic order after the end of the Second World War is no longer a valid settlement. The use of the dollar as an international reserve currency on its own for commodity pricing whether it is coffee or cotton is no longer sufficient.

I will not go into the detail of the Lisbon treaty as it will be dealt with elsewhere and by other people. The emotional engine for the Lisbon treaty is the completion of this process since the collapse of the Berlin wall and the creation of a Europe for the 21st century which is fit for purpose. It is not the best treaty around. It is not the type of Europe that I would like to have seen. However, it is the only Europe around. Those who state, "Vote No for a better Europe" are actually stating, "Vote No to stop Europe in its tracks".

We are at a time when the world has changed and after 15 years of positive economic growth we are now confronted with a slowdown over which we do not have much control. We are confronted with the price of oil being more than $100 a barrel over which we do not have control. We are confronted with the sub-prime crisis from unregulated greedy capitalism which has created a field of landmines in our now globalised financial institutions, the consequences of which we simply do not know the extent.

In the midst of all this uncertainty which has only occurred since last July, if we were to deliberately and consciously vote "No" to making Europe fit for purpose for the 21st century, what message would it send to ourselves and to the rest of the world? We have the most open globalised market economy within Europe. We need as much certainty at a time of uncertainty we can possibly get. In the areas in which we do have control, such as the referendum on the Lisbon treaty, we must resoundingly vote "Yes". I support the Bill.

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