Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)

As our party president said, the Government has saved us a lot of money. We are pleased the people have got their outcome and that we do not have to court as we did previously when Deputy Pearse Doherty took his case.

It is strange to look across the House and see the leader of the Labour Party there because as we debate these issues and make our statements, the European Trade Union Congress and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions - the Labour Party grass roots - are protesting outside the European Commission building on Molesworth Street. They are protesting against what this treaty represents and against the right wing policies of austerity which have failed people across Europe. That should inform the Tánaiste as to the approach he should have taken on this issue and as to the negotiation strategy he should have adopted.

It is interesting that when people question the direction Europe is taking, we hear all sorts of statements about them being self-serving, cynical, conspiracy theorists, etc. Yet, when the European Constitution was put to the people of France, debates took throughout that country, in libraries, town halls and hotels and, on a progressive basis, the French people rejected the proposition of the European Constitution. They rejected the direction Europe was taking. The people of Holland did the same.

Before it came to Ireland, those in Europe stopped the process because the constitution was clearly being rejected. What happened instead? Did they go back to the drawing board saying they needed to reflect on the fact the European project was losing its way and was disconnected from the people on the ground? Not at all. They reconfigured some small parts of the constitution and put together the Lisbon treaty. The only reason Ireland had its say on the Lisbon treaty was thanks to Raymond Crotty, who took his case in the 1980s and against all the odds eventually won the right for the Irish people to have their say on these matters, the transfer of economic and political sovereignty to another remit. The Irish people then became the third country to reject what was, essentially, the same proposition.

What did Europe do about this? We know what the Tánaiste did about it. He went into the US embassy and told the US ambassador we would go back and do it again.

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