Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

The European Union Bill 2009 is essentially a legislative dotting of i's and crossing of t's, following the ratification by the people of the Lisbon treaty. Of all the challenges facing this country at present, the longer-term strategic importance of that decision is second to none.

All the parties and civic organisations who worked for a "Yes" vote are to be commended, including our partners in Government, the Greens, and the main Opposition parties, who put country before party. Two former Fine Gael taoisigh plus another former Fine Gael leader also contributed with their usual authority to the debate. I also pay tribute to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Affairs.

The Taoiseach, Deputy Brian Cowen, and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Micheál Martin, our diplomats and civil servants deserve particular credit for their skilled and patient handling of the fall-out from the first referendum, their careful research into the reasons it did not pass in June 2008 and the negotiation with our partners of guarantees and assurances which addressed all of the main issues, a strategy which was vindicated. The proposed alternative, the bombastic demands in June 2008 of the Libertas and Sinn Féin leaders who had no diplomatic responsibility, that the Taoiseach should go to our EU partners and, on behalf of a member state comprised of 4.5 million people lay down the law in all directions to the other 495 million people in 26 other member states to tear up the treaty, and renegotiate, if not subvert, the entire project seeking all sorts of opt-outs not in the national interest and make the EU treaties and their interpretations subordinate to the Irish Constitution was utterly removed from any political reality and would have wrecked our relations with our partners and our reputation for trust and reliability built up over 35 years.

The analogy of the Downing Street Declaration, which explicitly referred to all parties on the way ahead and the Good Friday Agreement, did not stand up to a moment's examination. A better parallel in terms of realism or lack of it would have been the Sinn Féin demand in 1987 for a timetable for British withdrawal with reparations thrown in. The guarantees obtained by the Government consistent with the treaty showed up most of the critical claims made in the run-up to June 2008 as entirely baseless, with the important exception of the right of each member state to an EU Commissioner which could be re-established by unanimity using a contingency provision of the treaty.

It is ironic that while the disparate "No" campaigns argued unconvincingly that the guarantees obtained were worthless, the most ardent nay-sayer to Lisbon of all outside this country, President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic has indicated that he would be quite satisfied with Irish style assurances on the hypothetical question of retrospective land claims by people of Sudeten German descent and on the Charter of Fundamental Rights. I mention this without prejudice to the position that may be taken by this country or its partners in the European Council in response to this demand, if made and which may be joined by the Slovak Government.

Our European partners are also to be commended on their understanding and restraint despite their obvious anxieties and impatience after eight years of negotiations since the 2001 European Council in Laeken. On the weekend of the result, I was representing Ireland at the annual conference of the IMF and World Bank in Istanbul. The French economy Minister, Madam Christine Lagarde, alluding to President Sarkozy's admonition to the French people in another context that a nation needs to know to which family it belongs expressed satisfaction to me that Ireland had decided to stay with the European family.

The British development Minister, Mr. Douglas Alexander, led applause for the Irish decision at a working dinner in the British consulate. Quite apart from the effect of removing the major impediment to the euro-wide ratification of the Lisbon treaty, the decisive character of the vote has been a morale boost for the Union. Ireland has shown that when the arguments are clearly put there is still much popular support for the European Union despite cynical belief to the contrary.

As was pointed out in an article in yesterday's Financial Times, up to 18 months ago smaller states seemed to be doing better than larger ones and appeared to be the principal beneficiaries of globalisation. This led to a certain over-confidence about what we could achieve independently and an under-estimation of the importance of the support of a partnership framework that was to a degree reflected in the June 2008 vote.

The global economic and financial crisis has underlined the acute vulnerability of smaller countries. Ireland has been better placed than most by virtue of its membership not alone of the EU but of the eurozone. The crucial indirect supportive role of the European Central Bank is something we could not have done without in tackling the banking crisis. A clear majority of the Irish public has understood the importance of two-way EU solidarity if we are to come through this crisis with our freedom intact. If we do not want to run the risk of becoming even temporarily a failed state economically, we must take the necessary difficult decisions, one of which was changing our mind about the Lisbon treaty, including the notion that we did not need it and Europe could do without it.

I sat next to the Croatian ambassador at a recent farewell function in Iveagh House for the Mexican ambassador. His Government is delighted that a potential roadblock to enlargement, which is vital for stability in the Balkan region, has been removed, with Croatia likely to become a member within little more than two years. The model of national sovereignty and self-determination that existed only briefly between 1918 and 1939 between the two world wars was untenable. The equivalent in Irish terms was one of the Sinn Féin models, described at the time as the option of the isolated Republic. Miraculously, we made it as a neutral country through the Second World War, but the isolated Republic between 1949 and 1955 did not provide a model, either for economic and social development on a par with reconstruction across Europe or any international influence in the post-war years. The most important service performed by former Taoiseach, Seán Lemass, from August 1961 was to set Ireland on course for EEC membership, even if it took a decade to materialise.

I do not understand the political logic of those who resist our further engagement with Europe by positing "Thus far and no further" and, "Why cannot we stay as we are?" If it is mostly conceded that the EU has been good for Ireland, then the recommendation to vote "No" to each and every treaty must at some point have been wrong. However, no explanation is ever provided. How any class of Republicans, including dissidents, could come to share so much europhobia with the British Tory Party, far more influenced by Mrs Thatcher than by Ted Heath or Harold Macmillan, is beyond my understanding. Did not generations of Irish patriots from Hugh O'Neill to Sarsfield, Wolfe Tone, Davis, Pearse and Connolly, not seek help from the Continent? Happily, today, there is no incompatibility between having a close relationship with Britain and an equally close one with France, Germany, Spain and other continental countries.

What distinguishes Ireland's EU membership is the depth of our commitment to the European Union. EU membership gave Ireland an equality and respect it previously did not have in the Anglo-Irish relationship, with Britain previously looking down on the Republic as a weak and poor secessionist state. The EU, unlike the UN, which we constantly laud, has no great power directorate with exclusive individual vetoes. Those of us concerned with Northern Ireland will be well aware of the great support given by the EU to the peace process through measures such as the peace and reconciliation fund.

One would have thought that such positive differences to the advantage of Ireland and its independent status in Europe would have appealed more to Sinn Féin. The SDLP and the Scottish nationalists have adopted a far more positive attitude to the EU. I wonder also at the consistency of conservative groups who are ultramontane in their religion but Hibernian in their politics.

As the German Constitutional Court confirmed, the EU is an association of sovereign States, not a State, even less a superstate. The acquisition of legal personality by the EU or any other international organisation to which we belong does not alter or endanger this. As the German Federal Constitutional Court states, it is not decisive whether an international organisation has legal personality; what is decisive is the fundamental legal relation between the organisation and its constituent member states. Direct EU representation in capitals or forums, in which we are not represented, such as the G20, could be advantageous. Continuity of representation provided to a degree by a President of the European Council and the equivalent of a Foreign Minister will improve the coherence of the EU through which we operate and from which we benefit. The alleged loss of our sovereignty and neutrality on this, as on previous occasions in 1972 and 1987, is neither so total nor so great that should there be, even in ten years' time, the need for ratification of another treaty by the people, they will, in the opinion of those on the "No" side, not be ready to be lost all over again, since none of their previous predictions have come to pass. As Dr. Johnson once said, "There is a lot of ruin in a nation".

While of course we, like every other country, have to battle critically within the EU to defend our interests and ideals, it would be wonderful if we could abandon the residual element of paranoid defensiveness in some of our attitudes. Anti-EU parts of the left-wing intelligentsia, including those who call themselves Republican, surely need to recognise that the minimally funded superstate they conjure up is a Thatcherite mantra that should have no place in their philosophy or rhetoric. As anyone who studied her famous Bruges speech in 1988 will realise, Mrs. Thatcher was opposed to a hypothetical European superstate that recovered the power of the State, which she had been busy removing from it.

As Minister of State with responsibility for procurement, at a time when wasteful public expenditure is under heavy criticism, I am very proud of the fact that the Government and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government saved €1.7 million in postal and printing costs by attaching to the polling card the leaflet explaining the basic purpose and modality of the vote. The contract, as well as the saving involved, was widely praised by the house journal of the industry, the Irish Printer. There were a few complaints and political criticisms claiming that voters were confused, but I received no such complaints in my constituency.

The Lisbon treaty envisages an enlarged role for national parliaments. During my time in Seanad Éireann, Ireland's MEPs were invited to the House more than once for an exchange of views, which worked very well. As a former Senator, and also as a Minister of State who has spent considerable time participating in policy debates in the Seanad Chamber over the past 18 months, I am deeply disappointed that both membership of that Chamber and its political contribution appear to have been written off by the leadership of the main Opposition party. Even more extraordinary is that the party's Senators, including professional Senators, should have unanimously endorsed the verdict of their own redundancy coming from their leader. Uno duce, una voce seems to be back in vogue.

See this speech in context