David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful to my colleague and friend, Senator Daly, for sharing time because I had rather expected to be punished by being done out of the debate for declaring my independence. The vote is a tragedy. Cameron is a nincompoop, I do not know what on earth possessed him to hold a referendum but then Britain was never fully in the European Union. I remember it did not want to negotiate in the beginning or be part of the foundation. It was always having caveats and opt-outs and it never really endorsed it.

Many countries in Europe - France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Holland - had empires and have got over that. I am sorry to say it looks as if Britain has not quite got over that yet. There is a nasty racism about the whole thing but British people by and large are fairly politically illiterate, thanks to Mr. Rupert Murdoch. Where is Michael Gove now? Where is Mr. Boris Johnson? They have scuttled off into a little tunnel dug for them by the United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP. Where are they with their programme for what to do with the result that they argued so viciously for? They are now in the extraordinary situation that the best they will get is the Norwegian situation where they will have to pay for it but will not have a seat at the table. Well done, lads, quite brilliant. I could not have thought of anything better myself.

Of course, there is a lot wrong with the European Union. Look at the way it has treated this country, Cyprus and Greece which has been shoved into a situation out of which it can deliberately never get in order to punish it for being independent.What happened to Goldman Sachs, that wonderful, pure aspect of capitalism, which forged the books for them? It is off making further billions around the corner somewhere. Mr. Juncker's comments were completely unhelpful. But in this country the people are sovereign; in Britain, Parliament is sovereign. It does not have to do what it is told. The referendum was consultative. Parliament can tell them to bugger off and think again. That is what I would do if I was there. The Parliament should think about the welfare of its country first, and not the kind of half-literate electorate it has let loose. The disintegration of the United Kingdom may very well happen, which would be a further tragedy. As of yesterday, 3 million people were looking for a rerun of the referendum. That is a hell of a lot of people.

My final point is that I do not believe that this country has made any real preparations. I would be interested to hear them, but I do not think we really have. We are in the dark. Everybody here - and I include myself in this - was taken by surprise.