Brendan Ryan (Labour)

If the formation of the next Government is not extraneous, there is nothing I can say that is. However, I will try to confine my remarks to the Bill.

The triple lock does not represent an inhibition of the scale some of my friends in Fine Gael believe it to be, yet I would not rely too much on Javier Solana as an authority. When Mr. Solana first came to Ireland, he wanted to talk about the new security role in the European Union but we discovered that he had slipped through a clause in the European Parliament late in the session, effectively creating a carte blanche for himself to do all his business in secret. This was at a time when we were told the Union was to be a model of transparency. Second, when he came to talk to the joint committees on European affairs and foreign affairs, he insisted that the meetings be in private. This is not the way to win favour. The Joint Committee on European Affairs refused to meet him on his grounds and the meeting never took place.

The problem with security, particularly within the European Union, is that there are people at the highest level in the Union who deeply resent not having a big stick to accompany their economic power. If one goes to Brussels for one of their fairly honest briefing sessions, they will tell one that Europe is an economic superpower and a military mouse and that they wish to change this. I do not have any great ambition to have a third military superpower on the planet to compete with the existing one and the developing one, China, which will probably not become a full military superpower in my lifetime but which will inevitably become one. If India's economy continues to develop as it is at present, it will also become a military superpower. I am not sure the necessary consequence of this is that the European Union should become one also, nor am I sure this is the way to achieve collective international security. The way to achieve it is through the strengthening and enforcement of international law.

I disagree with my friends in Fine Gael on the limitations of the existing UN system although I do not believe this issue is one that would lead to our having difficulties in forming a Government. We are well able to work these matters through and have found capacity to agree on more difficult issues. It is always easier to agree with Fianna Fáil than Fine Gael for the reasons I have already stated and which I will not repeat. I am very glad we are debating this issue because I remember Senator Mansergh saying foreign affairs constituted a matter for the Government and that the Oireachtas should, by and large, stay out of them. In doing so, he enthusiastically quoted Éamon de Valera.