Mr. McCartin, MEP:

I quoted the late William Butler Yeats, a former Member of this House, in Sligo. In the poem "Youth and Age" he said:

Mr. McCartin, MEP:

Much did I rage when young,

Mr. McCartin, MEP:

Being by the world oppressed,

Mr. McCartin, MEP:

But now with flattering tongue

Mr. McCartin, MEP:

It speeds the parting guest.

Mr. McCartin, MEP:

I am not becoming cynical, far from it, but Yeats was no fool.

Mr. McCartin, MEP:

Another philosopher came to mind when we were talking of people's interest in the European Union and politics generally. Lao Tzu, a Chinese philosopher who predated Christ by 400 years and was earlier than Confucius, said when disorder comes to the land, patriotism is born. The opposite is also true; when the land is in good order, people become complacent. When I first went to the European Parliament, I met many people who had been in the war, whose parents had disappeared and whose homes and property had all been lost. I met Germans who carried a heavy burden of guilt over what had happened to the Jewish communities in eastern Europe. Today we have moved further away from that and young people do not talk about it as much. Europe is not very fragile but it might be more delicate than we think because the passion for unity and structures to ensure peace might not exist to the same extent today. Young people may have forgotten the basic reason behind the creation of the European Union.

Mr. McCartin, MEP:

Senator Maurice Hayes mentioned the emperor Charlemagne. When we debated Europe in the early days, I asked why we were afraid of Europe when we had sent saints and scholars throughout Europe who assisted with its development as a continent. Charlemagne loved the Irish monks. A French person told me that Charlemagne valued les moines errants, the wandering monks, and encouraged them to come to his empire. The composer Robert Schumann proposed that Saint Columbanus should be the patron saint of Europe because he was the first man who viewed it in its entirety.

Mr. McCartin, MEP:

We survived in the United States and secured our identity not by waving the crom béal or dancing jigs and reels, but by becoming part of America. Our strongest asset in the European Union is our ability to go there with the self-confidence that brought St. Columbanus to northern Italy, where he founded cities, and that brought 500,000 Irish Wild Geese to fight for causes other than their own.