The Bill before us finalises the process to allow the ten countries involved to accede to the European Union. It is a small technical Bill, which in itself means very little, and allows us to endorse the accession of those countries. While one might think that is all there is to it, one must look back at the history of the accession countries. Ireland had a long history of upheaval. The ten countries have come from chaos and poverty. They have come from the dark into some form of normality. Since the Second World War there have been upheavals in central and eastern Europe. The negotiations that took place in 1998 represented a very hard slog. They had to change from a centralised economy approach to a market economy and at the same time inform the people and bring them along.