Joe McHugh (Fine Gael)

I welcome Deputy John Bruton. From my brief experience in politics a significant event was the recent Nice treaty referendum. Without stealing the thunder from the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Roche, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Cowen, Deputy John Bruton championed the cause in relation to that referendum.

The Leader of the House in her vision in Glenties last summer – perhaps she was inspired while in county Donegal -spoke of decentralising the debate from this House. I congratulate her on doing so because it is important. Everyone of us as a political representative had to put up with a great deal of negativity and scaremongering during the last Nice treaty referendum because people felt they were disenfranchised and that there was a democratic deficit.

In line with the thinking of the Leader to decentralise the debate, I would like to go a step further and bring it to local authority level as councillors are in touch with the people. They hear the person on the street ask the reason are it is becoming a bland Europeanised project, a uniform European Union. Every area should be distinct and authentic in its own right in keeping with the theory of subsidiarity.

The Deputy said in one of his statements that there was a Europeanising of the European project which was in breach of subsidiarity. While that is not the language of the ordinary person, it is exactly what the ordinary person is thinking in west Clare, west Mayo or west Donegal. We should be treated differently even on an inter-regional basis nationally but also in a European context. The way to do this is to follow up the Leader's thinking on the matter on which I followed through at local authority level by putting a motion to Donegal County Council calling for the setting up of an EU sub-office to disseminate information from the European Union or perhaps even to bring European bureaucrats, or our own, to participate in each local authority on the island, as the people will be only allowed to debate the European project again come the next referendum.