Derek McDowell (Labour)

Like other colleagues, I have no great enthusiasm for the constitution but no great difficulty with it either. The Labour Party has long since recanted its mistake in 1972 of opposing membership of the EEC — or at least most of us. From our political perspective, this comes from one simple realisation, namely, that capital is organised multinationally. To ensure one has proper standards of social provision, decent environmental standards and so on, one must operate on the basis of co-operation between nations at the very least. If there were no other reason, that would be sufficient for the Labour Party and the Social Democrats throughout Europe to support the European project generally.

Personally, I would have liked to see something much more radical in the constitution. It should have gone a good deal further. I would like to have seen much more common foreign policy, including defence. We should be looking to establish structures from which a federal Europe can in time develop. However, it is far from that. What we have is very much a compromise that should, on the face of it, provide little difficulty for anyone.

In the few minutes available to me, I wish to address an issue that I have not yet heard debated today. I suppose it may scare many of us off, and perhaps that is right. I speak of the elephant in the room, perhaps the biggest reason so many people in France, the Netherlands and Denmark may vote "No", namely, immigration.

In a sense, we are joining this debate at a very late stage. Our experience thus far has been unique. We have relatively transient immigrant communities. We do not know how long they will stay, but by and large they do not stay very long. We have not had the experience of Britain, France, Austria, the Netherlands or Germany. Large sections of major cities such as London, Paris and Berlin are occupied mainly by people who may very well not want to be there, who speak a different language from the host nation, have a different culture, and are frequently not welcomed.

We must get our heads around this issue. I am not suggesting there is a clear or obvious division between those who argue for a multicultural society and those who wish to argue for integration. It is not that clear-cut. No one is suggesting that people who come intending to stay, bring up their children and die here should leave every element of their culture at home — far from it. Nor are we saying to people — I certainly am not — that they should come and take part of our city or country and make it like part of their own.

We should be saying to immigrant communities that they should come and live among us, find out about us and our history, learn our language and know our culture, taking from it and giving to their children what they will. By all means, they should retain and practise their own culture too. However, we must make it clear that we want people to integrate and take of our Irishness, becoming Irish in a sense themselves. They should not turn their backs on their own country, culture, background and history but make theirs part of ours too. This is not relevant to tomorrow, next year or the year after, but it may very well be relevant in 20 years. It will be relevant if, in 25 years, we have a new generation of Irish people whose parents were not born here. It is high time we had that debate, since this issue is charged. It brings out emotions that for many can be quite raw. However, the worst thing we could do would be to ignore it, pretend there is no issue and that we do not in some way feel uncomfortable when we see something so dramatically different from our culture and way of life on our streets. We cannot pretend that we can integrate without making the effort of understanding and educating nor can we ask others to integrate without encouraging or assisting them to understand our culture and history. That is the primary point I wanted to make today.

I support the constitution. Professor Richard Sinnott of UCD recently produced a study at the Joint Committee on European Affairs in which he showed that the various referenda we have had over the years on European issues have been no more than one referendum held every four years about the same issue, which is essentially a barometer of public opinion about "Europe". Asking the people about Maastricht did not get a response on the single currency. People who voted on Nice II did not know a great deal more than when they voted differently a few years earlier on Nice I. In essence, all one is asking people at any given time is how they feel about Europe. Perhaps this is not politically correct, but we must ask ourselves whether this is a sensible way to run the Union.

If we have a net question about which people are really concerned, such as participation in military alliances, by all means let us go to them with it, but we cannot go to them, assuming the constitution is passed — a big "if"— with each and every amendment. To do so is to court trouble and, frankly, does not increase our understanding of the European Union or add a great deal to our democracy.