Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

I am glad of the opportunity to contribute to this debate as a member of the Joint Committee on European Affairs, which is chaired by Deputy Durkan. I commend him and the other members on their work on bringing the White Paper to its current stage. I am quite sure many matters remain to be resolved in its final compilation. The work is very good and contributes to the overall belief that what happens in EU headquarters is of the utmost importance in Ireland. That is what we are all trying to convey, irrespective of whether we are members of the Joint Committee on European Affairs or the Sub-Committee on Ireland's Future in the European Union. We are all doing the one job, that is, to make the EU more palatable and understandable. I do not know if we will all succeed in this regard.

Before I entered the Chamber, I noted an e-mail stating the sub-committee is meeting eminent communicators today, including Professor Richard Aldous, Mr. Eamon Dunphy and Mr. George Hook. Members of the sub-committee will be asking such people how they believe the EU can be made more understandable. Fresh from Limerick, Mr. Hook is here to tell us how to go about it. It is a very good idea to invite eminent communicators to appear before the sub-committee to determine what they can contribute to the debate.

With regard to the European project and strategy generally, we all noted last Monday's The Irish Times/TNS mrbi poll, which seemed to indicate there has been a softening of attitudes among the middle classes and farmers, who are now in the "Yes" camp in respect of the Lisbon treaty. I urge great caution in examining those findings. I am reminded somewhat of the rural saying "whistling past the graveyard", which will perhaps delight the eminent communicators invited to appear before the sub-committee. I am sure they would understand what it means. It is exactly a question of whistling past the graveyard because we were doing so right up to a month before we all voted in the referendum. We know the result. To rely on polls is precisely to whistle past the graveyard.

Be that as it may, both committees are working very hard to make the Irish realise "to be at the heart of Europe" is not just a trite saying but a phrase of considerable importance to everyone. I wonder where idealism is gone — I do not wonder; it is "with O'Leary in the grave" in a big way — in that the very idea that we are part of the European project, which is of enormous significance in so many people's minds and hearts, is not emphasised sufficiently.

Over the past two weeks, very interesting reminiscences and memorial services were held to mark 90 years since the First World War, which war was to end all wars. Of course it did not end all wars because, some 20 years later, it was followed by an equally vicious and divisive war to end all wars. Be that as it may, I felt very moved looking at very old people who could still remember what it was like to be in the France and Belgium during that period.

The European project was established so there would never again be a need for a war such as the Second World War. This point is not emphasised sufficiently, be it at meetings of the Joint Committee on European Affairs, chaired by Deputy Durkan, or the Sub-Committee on Ireland's Future in the European Union, chaired by Senator Donohoe. These chairmen are eminent politicians. The belief that so many people of different nations could live together in harmony should surely strike a chord with many people. The broadcasting of memorial services in recent weeks emphasised the numbers who died in various battles. In one particular battle — Verdun, I believe — there were 50,000 casualties in one day alone. When one considers this, one must ask what was it all for. It was surely so we would learn to live in peace. I hope we have done so and that the European project has achieved this.

We do not place sufficient emphasis on the fact that we are all in the one ideological bind. Could we not emphasise this further, particularly to young people? That would be along the ideological lines of looking at what happened in the past and referencing it to what is happening now.

Europe has been of considerable benefit to us. People say that we are only as good as the last trick, that the last handout from Europe is the one that must be followed and that if we cannot better that we should stay at home. That is not the case. When I was in the Department of Education, I saw the significant benefits that came to Ireland through our participation at the Council of Ministers. In particular, I single out the Erasmus programme which continues to be of great benefit. Young students travel abroad and other students come here, to learn and taste of life in other countries and to continue their formal education in the process. The Leargas programme has also been of considerable benefit. The institutes of technology would not have survived had it not been for the significant input into their budgets from Europe.

There are the farmers who, sadly, let us down in the vote on the Lisbon treaty last June. In the latest MRBI poll it appears they are swinging around but for how long will they swing in that way? I had hoped that Deputy Costello would be present when I spoke. I looked into the committee chamber on Tuesday when he was speaking to Mr. Ganley. I do not wish to talk about Mr. Ganley because the more one talks to or about him the more notice he gets and the bigger his head grows. Deputy Costello was remarkable. He put to Mr. Ganley the issue he had raised concerning children being taken away from their parents. Last night TV3 showed Mr. Ganley saying the things he denied he had said. We saw a clip of him being interviewed by Deputy Eamon Gilmore during the course of the referendum campaign. Mr. Ganley was seen to say that young people would be taken from their parents.

We can talk for ever about financial institutions and what the eminent work of the Joint Committee on European Affairs will mean. None the less, there are terraces and roads full of people who are firmly of the belief that all children under the age of three years were to be snatched from their parents, and that if somehow the children were hidden under the beds and escaped being snatched, then when they were 16 years of age they would be drafted into the European army. Whatever the outcome, parents would not have their children and would have no rights over them. This belief was due to the work and the utterances of a group, Cóir, a very hardline right-wing group, with which that protagonist who appeared on Tuesday is strongly allied, as the TV3 interview with Deputy Eamon Gilmore showed. It was riveting to see him telling the lie, or the untruth, if the Acting Chairman, Deputy Kirk, believes I should not use the other word, at the committee on Tuesday. People of that kind are to be very much avoided but they are a fact of life.

I do not know how we are going to debunk every similar matter. The Chairman of the Joint Committee on European Affairs is present in the Chamber. There is talk of having different codicils which would address taxation, sovereignty and other issues. They will not address fear. Fear was the predominant sentiment of the Lisbon treaty debate. People had utter fear that their lives would be disrupted and that everything would happen to turn their lives inside out.

I strongly recommend what the Chairman has done in gaining time for this debate today. It is about mortgages. Can there be anything more matter of fact than mortgages? They permeate the lives of all of us. I hope the debate will go as far as the White Paper and further. We are to be followed by the Joint Committee on European Scrutiny, chaired by Deputy John Perry. He will show that committee's work in scrutinising impenetrable EU directives, putting them into plain language and somehow trying desperately to bring back the connection between Europe and the people of this country.

I was very put out by a magazine, Alive!, that was distributed through churches during the campaign. It told the most horrendous untruths——

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