Brendan Ryan (Labour)

You are the Cathaoirleach and on all things you are right. I am genuinely concerned about what I believe to be a movement which is operating on two sides of the political spectrum, in China and the United States, which is the decoupling of the market economy from democracy. There is an extraordinary experiment taking place in China in which it is developing a market economy within a non-democratic state. There is a degree to which the United States is also decoupling the concept of a free market from a properly functioning democracy. Europe should be the rallying point for the belief that a social market economy is successful, flexible and competitive within a genuinely functioning and operating democracy. The constitution is an albeit ambiguous, uncertain and unclear step in that direction.

All arguments about national sovereignty are subordinated to the fact that we still have popular sovereignty which means, as Deputy Harkin, MEP, said that if we do not like it, if it is so wrong or repressive, we can always leave. So long as we can leave we will still have popular sovereignty. While national sovereignty in terms of economics is history, we still have popular sovereignty. If conditions in the EU become so awful we can withdraw from it, but we will not need to and we should, therefore, vote "Yes" to this constitution.