Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. Like everybody else in this House, I am deeply worried by this decision. The economic future of this country has been thrown into a huge amount of doubt as a result of what happened; it is not necessarily bad or good but the extent of the doubt is unfathomable at the moment. The opportunity we should take from this is to learn a lesson from what happened in Britain and ask why the British made this decision, which, I suggest, will probably be bad for them and will certainly not be to our benefit initially.

Much of what Deputy Fitzmaurice said is true. I agree with him. There are so many things wrong with the European Union that one can understand why some people in United Kingdom voted against it but I am not so sure why so many did. The image the European Union portrays because of its behaviour, particularly at the top, invited a decision of that sort from those who had an opportunity to give it. I say that as one who would never support our withdrawal from the Union, because it would be disastrous for Ireland, and as one who is optimistic about the future, whether the UK eventually is in the Union. I would not say at this stage it is a foregone conclusion that it will be outside the Union in four, five or six years time. There is every possibility that when Britain comes down to negotiating, it takes so long that they agree a deal which is not acceptable to the British people and we have unthought of consequences at that stage. Our attitude and that of the Government should be one of calm, not panic, in this situation and, second, we should position ourselves to be able to deal with a situation of this sort. By that I mean that if Britain really does leave the union, we should examine what are the advantages for us. It was thought that Britain not being in the eurozone would be a great disadvantage to us, but once the break was made it allowed us to exploit the currency differences to our great advantage and it is one of the reasons our exports have been doing so particularly well. Let us look at it in that sense and from the perspective that we may well be able to attract a great deal of business that Britain would have got if it had not withdrawn. We may be able to take advantage of this fact, even though Britain is our closest neighbour and friend, and, economically, that may happen.

With respect to the reasons this happened, let us be crusaders in taking the lessons from this when we talk about Europe, and when we go there and represent Ireland. We must also understand why so many people regard Europe certainly as a benefactor and as a market, which is now irreplaceable and to which we are tied absolutely inexorably, but also, as Deputy Fitzmaurice said, a Union which is run by a very small number of undemocratically elected people. We are part of that negation of democracy. We continually nominate, for example, Commissioners to the most powerful positions in Europe from among our political ranks. It is not only one party that does that; all parties do so. They exploit the European ideal to become part of the European elite. That is not the only example. There are other plum positions in Europe in which people who have bought into the European ideal participate. There is a bank called the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development on the board of which politicians shamelessly end up after retiring, or losing their seats or having nothing else to do. That sort of thing, which is common in Europe, does inevitable and irrevocable damage to its image among the people. That is one of the reforms we as a small nation could lead by changing that image in order that we would not suffer the same criticism which was so articulately put and so sadly had the result we saw last week.

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