Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Bill and the White Paper, which I look forward to studying. Membership of what is now the European Union has been, during the past 35 years, a vital factor enabling Ireland, following centuries of vicissitudes, to make dramatic progress fulfilling its destiny as a nation.

According to Dr. Hillary, Emile Noël, former Secretary General of the European Commission, once described Ireland's joining the EEC in 1973 as our second declaration of independence. Our European commitment is entirely consistent with and a working out of our religious, cultural, nationalist and republican traditions. Some of the European founding fathers sought to make St. Columbanus the patron saint of a united Europe as demonstrated last August by an exhibition in Rimini.

In 1627, as the late Cardinal O'Fiaich was delighted to discover, Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill wrote to Philip IV of Spain proposing that an independent Irish Republic be placed under Spanish protection. Thomas Davis, in private a conservative as opposed to a militant or radical republican, wrote:

Foreign alliances have always stood among the pillars of national power. Again, it is particularly needful for Ireland to have a foreign policy. Intimacy with the great powers will guard us from English interference.

He had in mind countries such as France and the leading German states. This was echoed in the 1916 Proclamation with its reference to gallant allies in Europe.

Today, EU partnership is able to embrace Britain and continental Europe and to transcend the conflicts and oppositions of the past. We have different allies according to the subject under discussion — Britain and Sweden on tax sovereignty; France and Poland on the CAP. We are part of the inner eurozone circle but not of Schengen. When Seán McDiarmada was asked in 1916 why a republic, he referred to the examples of France and America. The former, he stated, had been a firm friend of Ireland for generations while millions of Irish people had played a central role in the latter.

Thomas Addis Emmet, later attorney general of New York, told a secret parliamentary committee into the causes of the 1798 rebellion in answer to a question from the Archbishop of Cashel about the economic viability of an independent Ireland: "America is the best market in the world and Ireland the best situated country in Europe to trade with that market." It is a remarkable prophecy of our present geo-economic situation with many US companies choosing Ireland as a base to trade into the European market. His brother Robert — they were both grandchildren of a Tipperary doctor — looked forward in his famous speech from the dock to Ireland taking its place among the nations of the earth. For us, the most intensive concert of nations takes place in the European Union to which practically every European country belongs or wishes to belong with rare exception.

Since Ireland joined what is now the European Union, employment has virtually doubled, emigration has been reversed and our living standards have been raised from under two-thirds of the EU average to above it, even on the most conservative measure. It has helped us to make enormous economic, social and environmental progress. Ireland has received €40 billion in subsidies which has enabled us to transform nearly every sector of our economy.

The policy of successive Governments to place Ireland at the heart of Europe has been a highly successful diplomatic strategy. As French President Nicolas Sarkozy told his British hosts recently, "If you are a full member of Europe, you have more of a say than if you are on the margins". That is the nub of the argument. We need to maximise our influence on decisions of concern which are being taken and deliberated upon practically every week in Brussels. No one would understand why a member state which has done so well out of membership in terms of radically improving its position, a major success story of the EU, would rebuff and try to block the organisation that has made it all possible. Politicians and diplomats from countries such as Denmark that were forced by referendum in 1992 to opt out of European policies deeply regret that marginalisation and want to reverse it.

The treaty makes no dramatic changes to the way the EU is organised. The former Latvian president, Mrs. Vike Freiberga, was right when she told the forum on Europe that most countries felt it did not justify a further referendum which was optional for them, particularly as the referendums in nine of the 12 accession states had been able to take many issues arising from the convention report of 2003 into account. The French have reversed their decision on the treaty and ratified it. The French rejection was not a lasting one; it has been reversed in a perfectly acceptable democratic manner according to their rules by the representatives of the French people and representative democracy is just as valid as direct democracy. The Dutch will soon do the same.

The British Eurosceptics are well on the way to being defeated in their own country and their own parliament but would love a proxy victory here, even though they have nothing to offer this country and never had and we, not they, would pay most of the price. It would be monstrous if Britain, with its level of scepticism, ratified the treaty, while we who have always been loyal, constructive and committed Europeans, chose to reject ratification. People who ask to do this have not thought through how deeply damaging it would be to the national interest. If the claim is that the treaty was badly negotiated from Ireland's point of view, that sort of diplomatic strategy would be absolutely appalling.

Every party with experience of Government, practically every representative organisation among the social partners, is advocating a "Yes" vote and they know what they are doing. With the level of financial turbulence in the world today, it is no time to take unnecessary risks or to damage the confidence so important to investors that we are well placed in Brussels to influence and shape the decisions that are important to us and to them.

Arguments about sovereignty are like ones about personal freedom. In theory a person with no job, no fixed place of abode, no family ties, is freer than someone who has all of these things, but that is to confuse freedom from constraint with the positive freedom to achieve which is generally possible only through ties and co-operation networks. Cuba, Burma, Albania and North Korea may be the most sovereign countries in the world with few ties to anywhere else but they are also among the most impoverished.

Ireland has an interest in being part of an effective European Union that works, not an minimalist intergovernmental structure with nobody to look after the community interest. A Commission of 30 members and more would not be an effective functioning body and needs to be streamlined, otherwise all the real work will be done in committees. There need be little fear of a super-state, a Thatcherite phrase, confined to a budget of around 1% of GDP. The President of the European Council will only be able to speak on behalf of the Union when so mandated. He or she will not be more powerful than the German Chancellor or the French President and it is notable that neither of them is applying for the job.

What are some people afraid of? Where is the actual evidence of the increased militarisation conjured up at each referendum campaign? On the contrary, all the evidence and all the figures would show reduced military budgets over the past 20 years across Europe, reduced personnel and the phasing out of conscription in the few countries where it remains. What is wrong with increased international engagement? Are we not all, but especially those on the left, meant to be internationalist in outlook? De Valera strongly advocated this in 1946 in a debate on membership of the United Nations and in particular on the enforcement of obligations and the enforcement of rights. He added, "If there is ever to be a rule of law nations must make up their minds they will take part in such enforcement." Since when has abortion arrived in Ireland? The principle of subsidiarity still holds. Socio-moral legislation is a matter for us. The EU Charter of Rights, an extension of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which we are already party, does not change the position nor replace the constitution of member states, which it cannot be used to override. Is it not true that the European Union has been the most effective instrument of regional peace that the world has ever seen, and also one of the most pro-life organisations, in that since 1945 generations of young adults have not been slaughtered on the battlefields of Europe?

Church leaders, including successive popes, well understand the big picture and have always been supportive of the European project. In an address to diplomatic heads of mission in the Vatican before Christmas, Pope Benedict XVI said that the Lisbon treaty, "gives a boost to the process of building the European home".

Is there not something deeply incongruous about a party, whose deputy leader, who is also Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland, recently went to Europe with the First Minister, Dr. Paisley, jointly seeking increased EU aid to underpin peace and stability, yet whose policy requires it to campaign against this treaty? It has campaigned against all EU treaties. If, as Deputy Ó Snodaigh acknowledged on a previous occasion, Europe has done a lot of good things, then which of the treaties should Sinn Féin have supported in order to make these good things possible? As Karl Marx once said, "If you will the end, you must will the means." A leading member in the North acknowledged to me some years ago that Sinn Féin has not updated its European policy in 30 years. One could argue that it is at least 50 years out of date. The marginal short-term political advantage of saying "No" will be as illusory here as it has been for the Tory Party across the water. Anti-Europeanism could be a serious barrier to future participation in Government. Sinn Féin claims to champion a united Ireland which can only come about with consent, not realising or wishing to acknowledge that one of the most significant attractions of the Republic to the Northern business community is our deeper involvement in Europe. I have to smile when I hear that party present itself as a champion of sovereignty, neutrality and parliamentary democracy. Is that the same parliamentary democracy that Deputy Morgan a few weeks ago called "a partial parliament in a little semi-statelet"? The following morning on radio, when I was debating with him, he declined to say that the Government of the Republic was not the army council of the Provisional IRA. This is talk of neutrality from a party whose comrades only declared their war with Britain over in 2005. It is a pity this was not thought about for 30 years when hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money that could have been spent on developing this country were spent on Border security.

The European Union operates on a balanced political philosophy. It is neither excessively neo-liberal, nor hardline socialist or state interventionist. I would be equally distrustful of ultra-leftism and of the visceral Thatcherite hostility to Europe commonplace in certain sections of the British media which a millionaire-led organisation called Libertas would like to import into Ireland. Its running away from cross-questioning at the forum on Europe this morning speaks volumes for the incoherence and incredibility of its case against the treaty. I am sure Fine Gael Deputy Lucinda Creighton welcomes the publicity of being on a Libertas poster in her constituency and would be rightly dismissive of the politically naive attempt to damage her.

The treaty is in essence our treaty, one which the Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, negotiated with great skill in 2004, much to the admiration of his peers in Europe. A lot of good preparatory work was also done by Irish members of the convention from all parties. Enlargement means we have to share, that our part will slightly diminish. Our influence does not depend on our isolated voting strength in any of the institutions, but on our alliances and partnerships with like-minded countries that have similar interests. Larger states until recently had two Commissioners but from 2014, like us, they will have none from time to time. At least on that point they are making the bigger sacrifice. As a mature member state of 35 years, we have many ways of bringing our influence to bear on or within the Commission in which there are very experienced senior Irish officials. It would make no diplomatic sense to vote down a treaty desired by the governments of all our partners. A vote by one country, large or small, is not sustainable or tenable beyond the very short term as the interests of the individual country and the union would suffer. In the 1970s a very small state, Malta, was in the habit of vetoing progress in the CSCE, or the Helsinki negotiations, a form of sore thumb diplomacy. It did nothing for it or anyone else.

Which threats to our interests, and there are some, under existing treaties would be removed by advocating a "no" vote? Ireland would gain nothing from such a manoeuvre and no one has explained what the short, medium or long-term gains from such a strategy would be. People say we would remain full members of the Union, that is as it may be, but we would be much diminished. Could people who are advocating a "no" vote spell out what we or the Union, of which we are part, would gain from that? Do we not have a certain interest in the prosperity and strength of the European Union of which we are members? We know the gains we have made from European Union membership and for putting Ireland at the heart of Europe. Let us stick to a winning strategy and vote "yes".

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