Chris Andrews (Dublin South East, Fianna Fail)

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on this issue. In many ways, I am very disappointed with the result. When a person puts a big effort into an event, he or she hopes that it will go in the desired way but, unfortunately, on this occasion that did not happen. My constituency colleagues, Deputies Ruairí Quinn and Lucinda Creighton, also put a huge effort into the campaign. I met them regularly on the ground, in and out of shopping centres and canvassing door to door. The last time I met Deputy Quinn was at canal bridges.

There was a multiplicity of reasons and issues which resulted in people voting "No". There is no simple answer and we can look at it in many ways till the cows come home. I picked up on a couple of main issues. One is that the treaty is a complex legal document made between 27 nations and it was extremely difficult to simplify. There were other issues completely unrelated to the European Union. In the country, people were concerned about not being able to cut their turf. Fishermen had difficulties too and farmers did serious injury to the "Yes" vote although they came out to support it in the last——

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