Ulick Burke (Fine Gael)

I also welcome Deputy John Bruton and I compliment him on his input into the concept of Europe now and throughout his career; he has always been a good European.

During the past 15 years there has been a noticeable and unfortunate rejection of the concept of Europe by the Irish electorate. We used to be top of the league and were recognised as good Europeans, but we have fallen away. We have lost ownership of the European concept. One of today's newspapers details a serious development as a result of the current determination of America to go to war, which seems to have led to new alignments of States within Europe for and against war. The fallout may be that Irish diplomats and representatives dealing with the Fischler reforms will lose some of their supporters when it comes to securing certain reforms because of these realignments. Deputy Bruton should comment on this.