Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)

Like my colleagues, I welcome the Taoiseach's attendance in the House and I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach with special responsibility for European affairs, Deputy Treacy, to the House. I emphasise the importance of our continuing to focus on European issues.

I was pleased that the Taoiseach gave a confident reassertion of the importance of Europe to our ongoing prosperity. He also promoted the EU constitution, which is a rather courageous position when one considers mainstream European political and media thinking would seem to suggest, depending on the part of Europe, that the EU constitution is all but dead or stillborn. There are continuing debates in Europe on the way forward following the rejection of the EU constitution in France and the Netherlands, for example, that if the 95% of it about housekeeping issues and administrative detail were dropped, the more complex issues relating to common foreign policy and defence issues could move ahead.

I might also suggest that one of the failings of the concept was calling it a constitution in the first place.