It is very important not only that I thank the Seanad for its invitation, but that I recognise the important role of the Seanad in the political life of the State. Perhaps a more creative and substantial role for the Seanad could be considered, bearing in mind the evolution of Irish political accountability and Ireland's connection with European affairs. There is a clear sense, particularly through our domestic political representation as opposed to our MEPs, that many people feel a lack of ownership of the European project. We have to seek ways of grounding the European project within our domestic political institutions and I thank Senators for this opportunity to do so.

Ireland has come a long way in recent decades; it has, in a sense, emigrated from the past shared by those who left this country in years gone by and those who stayed. The first theme I want to discuss is that of going backwards. It is an option that makes no sense. Ireland's transition has brought us opportunities that were presented to earlier generations of Irishmen and Irishwomen only when they took an emigrant's boat and a job abroad. The transition to which I refer is particularly marked if we look at our economic performance. Ireland became politically independent in the 1920s and the new Government's first task was to try to establish the institutions of the new State, while asserting its space in the wider world. This task was achieved with aplomb and considerable success. While a policy of trying to build up infant industry behind protective barriers was appropriate during the great depression of the 1930s, that era eventually passed and such a policy came to be seen as wholly inappropriate to new circumstances.

It is interesting to pause for thought and to compare Ireland's development during the first and second halves of its 80 years of independence. Until the 1960s, we were politically free, but economically dependent on our neighbours. Forty years ago, 75% of Irish exports went to the United Kingdom and 90% of our agricultural produce was exported to feed UK citizens under that country's cheap food policy. Our currency was still linked with sterling but we did not have a say when decisions were being made. The policies of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Downing Street had to be adopted here, regardless of how irrelevant they may have been to us. Net emigration from this State reached one of its highest levels just over 40 years ago, leading to the establishment of the Commission on Emigration in the late 1950s. The commission examined the push and pull factors which broke the hearts of many families and the backs of many communities. The United Kingdom and Ireland shared a common labour market 40 years ago as a result of migration patterns. Words like partnership, industrial relations and public policy were not heard in that era, as we had inherited the British model of conflict between bosses and unions.

Forty years ago, Ireland was a stagnant, backward, failed region of the British economy. Although we were politically independent, we were locked in post-colonial stagnation. We were unfree and unsuccessful in economic terms. We began to change in the 1960s with a determined effort to invest in young Irish people in the form of education. Television opened our eyes to the wider world and we moved away from undue respect for authority and the old nostrums of previous generations. Our finest literature had been banned and our best authors had sought solace abroad.

I hesitate to quote James Joyce in the presence of one of the foremost Joycean scholars of the State, but prior to his death when asked about leaving Ireland, he said, "I never left". He told the truth because in his heart, mind, intellect and writing he had never left, but this isolated, insular, priest-ridden, nationalist place closed itself off from the world and finally the time came when it opened up. A large part of the opening up was due to one of the architects of the economic isolation, Lemass, who unbundled all that had gone before piece by piece to connect and move from isolation.

The big act of connection was the idea, although frustrated by De Gaulle in 1961, that Ireland, because it traded so much with Britain, would seek to connect with the European Economic Community along with Britain. That vision was carried forward by Lemass, Whitaker, Lynch, Hillery and Garret FitzGerald, people who brought real political vision and leadership to move the State from isolation to connection, from being closed to being open, from a pervasive sense of failure to a new spring in its step. The connection with the European Union was made part of the driving force, the traction and pulling mechanism, to lift us from isolation to connection, from failure to opportunity.

Joining the European Economic Community was not singular in its change as it was more complex. It alone was not the only force of change, it was also indispensable as an agent of change and in its pulling power to bring us to where we are today. It is my contention that the most creative act of sovereign independence exercised by the people politically in the 20th century was to add real value to our small State's influence by choosing to connect to the great project of European integration and the family of democratic nations which constitute today's Europe of values. Joining the EEC in a certain way, economically at least, was Ireland's second declaration of independence in the 20th century. We have understood from this one core thing about us as a people on an island: intelligent interdependence serves us well. It has replaced isolationism as the leit motif of public policy that has led to change and success. Happily, the people when called upon in the 1970s and subsequently in other referenda to ignore this connection and continue with a deep frozen sense of 19th century style sovereignty isolated and in some sense purist but in fact stale and unsuccessful did not do so. We ignored those silent voices previously because they were wrong and we should ignore them again.

Europe brought us new ways, thinking and methods to approach public policy, which have become deeply embedded in how we manage our State's affairs, for example, in regard to gender equality and consumer protection. Ireland did not have an office of director of consumer affairs until it joined the EEC. Prior to that, consumer protection was dealt with under the Sale of Goods Act, 1898. With regard to environmental protection, many in Ireland have green and environmental values in regard to sustainability and inter-generational equity as they believe our inheritance from the abundance of nature's table should carry on to other generations. We have done better in Ireland by virtue of being in Europe in this area than we would have done alone.

Rules on state aids sometimes lead to tough politics because one learns to say "No," but a good rule, because it tries to make us leaner in a competitive environment, means we are better able to cope. Our involvement in the European Union has led to air transport and telecommunications liberalisation, indispensable cogs in the wheel of a modern economy of an island community, 90% of whose income is earned through trade.

The national development plans have led to dramatic improvements in planning, monitoring and evaluation skills in Ireland's formidable public service as an entirely new capacity has been developed in terms of public policy management and control. Membership of the European Union has also resulted in new standards in our approach to regulation with the establishment, for example, of the Employment Equality Agency, Competition Authority, Environmental Protection Agency and Health and Safety Authority. All these agencies matter to people and flow from the framework legislation of Ireland's European engagement.

Confrontation has been replaced by partnership in the relationship between Ireland's employers, unions and wider civil society. It is an Irish model but was inspired by a European method. Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of European integration, stated: "When you change the context, you change the problem". I believe that in the context of having a presence in the corridors of power of the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers our small State has learned to think of itself in terms of equivalence with the other states of the European Union. The old ghosts and atavism in our nationalism and feelings about Britain have matured and changed.

That easy sense of equivalence was part of the contextual change that allowed for a better relationship between Taoisigh and British Prime Ministers in the forging of the peace process in Northern Ireland. I will not digress except to express my own hope as we see its institutions under considerable stress that at the heart of the process non-violence matters and democracy are the only way for the core to survive however the process is buffeted now and in the weeks and months to come.

I could not have been the leader of a group in the European Parliament without the full and active support of my British colleagues. The Liberal Democrats were the largest component in our group under the European Parliament's system and had the right to call the prospect of the Parliament's presidency for themselves, but they were prepared to share that with an Irishman. I could not be President of the European Parliament if, among others, colleagues from the United Kingdom had not voted for me. I make the point because it is a different thing, a change of context, a change of opportunity.

While we moved on in the way I described, we still held on to attributes of our old psychology. We still had our old post-colonial dependency on Britain similar to our trade days in the 1960s. We too easily replaced it with a new psychological dependency, the crutch of European Structural and Cohesion Funds. It was the quick fix that generations of politicians used to sell Europe to the population and like all quick fixes eventually was stripped bare and exposed. Perhaps, curiously, between last year and this there may have been a delayed reaction and we are now having a European debate in Ireland. That is good and I welcome that fact.

The quick fix was to vote for £X billion and we would be all right on the night, bit we did not examine the text, subtext or context which together created the sense of that with which we were engaging. I am pleased we are having this debate, even if it has been delayed. Curiously, we are having it on the most puny and modest of the treaties on which we have been asked to give an account. It is the least of all the treaties by a large margin because it is about housekeeping arrangements. For example, it is similar to putting to the people how to run the Seanad and the rules of procedure. It is no wonder people are confused because they suppose that politicians can run institutions themselves and wonder why they should be bothered with it. This debate is long overdue in those terms and, happily, we are moving from the quick fix sale of funds.

Ireland has been the beneficiary of extraordinary European solidarity. Agricultural and Structural and Cohesion funding has been worth more than €70 billion since Ireland joined the European Union 30 years ago. Such funding has been the result of an extraordinary act of solidarity, freely given by our European partners, because Ireland was more agriculturally dependent and poorer than the average member state. It was not because we were Irish, but because the criteria and budget structure were in place.

The economic analysis for Ireland carried out by the funds does not explain modern Irish growth. Real national income in GNP terms doubled in the last decade and Structural Funds accounted for a very small part of that, perhaps a tenth. How we took off, subject to getting the conditions right, cannot be explained by structural funding. Part of the explanation, however, is the muscular effect of the market access that Ireland has in Europe. When we joined the EEC in 1973 our world-wide exports were worth €5 billion. Last year our world-wide exports were worth €82.5 billion. Subject to our remaining competitive, this is bread and butter we can continue to eat at Irish tables. These figures are not dependent on negotiated Structural Funds but on muscular economics and will continue to increase if we remain competitive.

Much of our growth came from the extraordinary flow of foreign direct investment, especially from the United States. We should be in no doubt, however, that while many preconditions are in place, such as speaking English, an educated labour force and a friendly tax environment, people still need to sell. Market access for a population of 4 million was not the platform that attracted 25% of all US foreign direct investment to the EU in 2000. Access to EU and other markets is a key part of that attraction. Our singular dependency on the UK is gone; it now takes just over a fifth of our total exports. It is still our major customer but things have changed. We must avoid replacing the old psychology of failure, emigration and stagnation with a new psychology intoxicated by the success of the last decade where, as on the soccer fields abroad, we might think that they will never beat the Irish and that the Irish can walk alone. Let us have no nostalgia for standing alone because it does not work.

I am aware of the attacks on respected and experienced voices in Ireland like Seán Dorgan, the chief executive of the IDA, in the course of the debate on the Nice treaty. People say he should not speak on this issue. For my part, I am glad people in civil society are speaking. I am glad ICTU, under the leadership of a Member of Seanad Éireann, is active and willing to engage, as are the chambers of commerce. People who are not members of any political party are working day in and day out both for and against the treaty. Why, then, am I pleased that Seán Dorgan is speaking? His is a voice of some experience. Walking down Grafton Street, there are signs in shop windows advertising vacancies and frequently they ask for experience, even for the simplest of jobs. Who should be believed when trying to make a rational assessment about Ireland's economic prospects and future foreign direct investment – Seán Dorgan, with all that he knows, or Justin Barrett, with all that he does not?

We are told that we will be flooded with immigrants. This is a lie. The level of migration to this country since Europe lost its Iron Curtain and people are free to travel has been negligible. The Irish know a lot about freedom to travel. There are more Irish illegals in Boston today than the sum of all the refugees and asylum seekers in this State. How did they get there? They had a passport and were therefore free to travel, but they did not have the right to work. In terms of the right to travel versus the right to work, the Irish know that if one can move and is determined, one will do it and take one's chances upon arrival. Having rid themselves of communist oppression and equipped themselves with a passport in a visa free environment a decade ago, how come they are not already here? The answer is because they do not want to be here. The argument to the contrary is a lie.

That argument would have us believe that they are all coming here because there are no jobs at home. At the same time there is a different argument used by the "No" campaign, that labour is cheaper in the applicant countries so all new jobs will be located there. They will not be coming here because all our jobs will be going there. The cheap labour argument does not stand up. It is an illiterate view of the contemporary Irish economy. People who think all those jobs were brought here because we are a cheap labour force are wrong. Also, those who think labour is cheap in Poland should go to China or elsewhere in Asia. If cheap labour is the issue we are not even in the game. We have moved up the ladder into a skills-productivity-education mix that puts us in a place that is not fighting in the cheap labour pond. If we were, we would not be where we are today in terms of what we have achieved or in terms of the ability to encourage, promote and retain jobs.

According to the "No" campaign, either jobs go to the applicant countries because of cheaper labour or there are no jobs in those countries and their citizens all come here. Neither is true and both show poor levels of analysis. I remember Anthony Coughlan's argument about centre-periphery in the 1970s, that the rich centre would suck in everything while the poor periphery supplied cheap labour. How wrong he was. Many in the rich centre would now love to be on the poor periphery in terms of performance and output. They were wrong before and thank God we ignored them. Please God we will ignore them again.

On Sunday I went to Portlaoise with a group of enthusiastic young people to campaign at the All-Ireland under-21 football final between Dublin and Galway. All politicians know we get the rough with the smooth out on the street and we got both that day. A man came up to me and told me he was voting "No" because he works in Aer Rianta. I had heard many arguments but this was a new one. I asked him to explain the logic in that argument. He told me that he was given a sheet in work stating that an article in the Nice treaty provided for the privatisation of Aer Rianta.

Article 133 of the treaty confers on the European Union authority to negotiate trade for the Union, mandated by the member states and accountable to the European Parliament, on the global stage. Article 133 is good for this State because it is the largest exporter of software in the world. The greatest threat to the software industry is piracy and we rely on our negotiating strength in the WTO to protect intellectual property, the real value of software, from piracy abroad. Having muscle in such a body provides muscle for Irish jobs. Isolation would not work for us. Someone has perverted the EU capacity to negotiate in the World Trade Organisation into a scare story.

I told that man that my father was a watchmaker who worked Aer Rianta's duty free shop in Shannon Airport. It was a good employer but when he died without a pension, it employed my mother and I paid my way through Trinity College by working there in the summers. I told that man that the company means something to me and that whoever was telling him this was wrong.

We must talk to people. We will not win this battle with photo calls in Buswell's Hotel or the Shelbourne Hotel. We must talk to people at the match, at the races and in the pub because they need simple acts of reassurance. There are a lot of hares being coursed out there today and many of them ought to be run to ground.

I hear people in the "No" campaign say there is a flexibility clause and that the "enhanced co-operation" of the treaty is eurospeak when the reality is more complicated. They say the flexibility clause will be used by the big states to gang together and jack up corporate taxation, to screw us and to make us join them. They say that, although it is against our national interest, we are stupidly, perversely and suicidally going to agree with this contract. These people speak for the large states although they do not represent them and have not in many cases been elected to represent anyone in this State. When elected, President Chirac had a policy platform to try to reduce corporate tax in France, but perhaps the "No" campaign knows more about running France than he does. Silvio Berlusconi was elected in Italy on a tax reduction platform, but perhaps the "No" campaign knows more about Italian politics than the Prime Minister of Italy.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer in the United Kingdom would not touch this taxation with a barge pole. I am going through the so-called large states, but where is the gang? Even if they did perversely change their minds and decide they wanted to do this, we have absolute authority to say "No thanks, we do not want it". Why would we want something that would damage us? The only way this flexibility clause could damage Ireland's jobs would be if our public policy makers behaved suicidally, like lemmings. We may have all sorts of arguments with each other about public policy and issues of management, corruption, control and expenditure, but we do not have arguments about strategic national stupidity and suicidal behaviour in terms of our national interest on the international stage. This flexibility stuff is bunkum. It should be treated as such and punctured.

Regarding the economy, I say to those who deal with farmers that between now and 2006 the slice of the purse given to Irish farmers will not change, with or without enlargement and with or without Nice. Senators are aware of the rí rá and ruaille buaille happening with regard to whether there will be a mid-term review of the Common Agricultural Policy and I do not know the answer. It is a negotiated system and we are not at the end, but because it is a negotiated order the things Irish farmers can give their political representatives in Europe are in their hands in the referendum on the Nice treaty. Those things are the powers of influence and goodwill and the power to raise friends or to blow friendships. They hold in their own hands the real key to their interests because this is a negotiated order and goodwill matters in such a system. It is true that new countries are perceived by many farmers as competitors for the purse, but they are also countries like us with respect for a rural life and agricultural traditions. They are allies of the future in the negotiated order in maintaining a focus on rural life and on an important and prominent role for agriculture in the European Union.

In simple terms, this treaty is about a family getting larger. Whenever a baby stops slavering in a high chair and moves to the kitchen table, everyone has to squeeze around to make room. We are being asked to squeeze around, to take a little bit less, but so is everyone else and they have all said "Yes" because this is making history. It is an unparalleled act of reconciliation. Without complicating it, it is formula for squeezing around the table to make room for others.

I hear that the big countries are out to get the small ones with regard to MEPs. From the next European election, depending on numbers, we will have one MEP for every 350,000 Irish citizens while Germany will have one MEP for every 826,000 citizens. Who is getting the better deal? Regarding the European Commission, from 2005 each member state, large or small, will get one commissioner for the first time ever. The five larger states are giving up a commissioner and for the first time large and small will be equal. Moreover, if this should change in the future – that has to be negotiated and agreed by unanimity – it can only operate on the basis of absolute equality between large and small. There is no hegemony of the large over the small, no prior right of the large over the small and no superior right of the large over the small in the treaty formula.

Regarding the weighting of votes in the Council, the reunified Germany has a population now of 81.8 million and after enlargement will have a voting weight of 8.5% at the Council table while Ireland has a population of just under 4 million and after enlargement, if we say "Yes" to the treaty, our voting weight will be just over 2%. Germany is 20 times larger by population, but just over four times bigger by weight. Does that formula represent a bad deal for the smaller state?

These large and small relativities are overdone. If we get this right, 2004 will be the year of the greatest act of reconciliation in modern Europe, an act of healing and an act of closure on a barbaric 20th century. It will be presided over in the Council of Ministers by an Irish Taoiseach, in the European Parliament by an Irish MEP and leading it in the European Commission – since it has gone from a national quota to a merit based system – will be the most senior civil servant, David O'Sullivan, an Irishman. Do not tell me that size is the only issue; it is about conviction, determination, passion, networking, friendship and relationship building. Those have been the keys and those other observations establish why that is so.

I believe in a Europe of values. I have talked much about Ireland and interests because in this treaty we are being asked to say "Yes" to something that is in our interest as well as to something that is morally right. What a wonderful conjunction in politics to suit one's pocket and to do the morally right thing at the same time. Through enlargement we are promoting pluralist democracy and sustaining it. It was to maintain pluralist democracy and to keep the flame of its values of human, individual and minority rights at the heart of affairs that, after Franco, Europe connected with Spain. After the dictator Salazar it connected with Portugal to do the same thing. We took in Greece in 1981 against what seemed the odds because the colonels had gone and we were sustaining democracy. That set of values matters very much in the newly independent states of central and eastern Europe. Europe respects cultural diversity; it is not an oppressive force and it does not represent a melting pot theory of integration. Europe would offend its own interests if it was to cease to respect the cultural plurality and the civic diversity on which it is founded through its states.

Europe shows extraordinary solidarity in global affairs with others and globally it is the leading promoter of policies on sustainability. Each of these values is consistent with our values, with the values of Bunreacht na hÉireann and with our vision in contemporary Ireland for ourselves and for Europe. I am proud that the EU and its member states form the leading global force promoting the Kyoto Protocol and the search for international solutions to climate change. I am proud that in Johannesburg, for all the high ambitions and modest achievements, Europeans beat the United States of America in convincing the Russians and the Canadians to sign up to Kyoto. These things matter in terms of quality of environment and inter-generational equity.

I am proud that the EU, its member states and its accession states have led the drive – we had a referendum here on this – to establish the International Criminal Court, which is the most significant step forward in terms of the protection and promotion of human rights that we have seen on the international stage. It is designed to get at dictators and despots, not at democrats, but there are problems with the USA which are being negotiated. This is an intrinsically proper and good thing to do.

Senators may not know it, but the European Union and its member states outspend the United States of America 2.5 to 1 every year in humanitarian aid, in nation building and on sustainability projects. If one believes in sustainability, international solidarity and the values which lie behind the International Criminal Court, how could we pervert them in the travesty of the debate which many people who say they have those values fail to espouse?

I was pleased today to hear my European parliamentary colleague, Danny Cohn-Bendit, president of the European Green Group and a man who voted for me with most of his colleagues in last year's election, saying he had asked the Irish to vote "Yes". He said he thought it was a bad treaty. However, one would be wrong if one thought he agrees with the Irish version of why it is bad. Danny Cohn-Bendit thinks it is a bad treaty because it is not federal enough. In a wonderful passionate speech yesterday he accused the Commission, which had just presented the reports on enlargement, of not dreaming. He said, "Je rêve de l'Europe". He was talking about his dreams of Europe and spoke with passion and intensity. Gerry Collins stood up with a pin and burst the balloon with one question. He asked him to tell his friends at home that a big obstacle to the enlargement of which he dreams is the Nice treaty. He invited them to ask the Irish people to vote "Yes". Danny Cohn-Bendit walked out of the chamber and gave an interview. He said he did not think it was the best treaty because it was not federal enough, but asked the Irish to vote "Yes". He knows it will remove the last brick from the Berlin Wall and is the morally right thing to do.

I want to discuss something which I would not believe only I heard it here. There is a debate that Europe is about to or has already become an aggressively militarised or militarising super state. That is a mouthful of clichés which I would like to separate. My view is that the super state is an invention of The Daily Telegraph and little Englanders in the United Kingdom. The super state hypothesis is an extremity and a distortion of today's Europe. However, it is so extreme that, like all extremes, it justifies its counterpart of excessive scepticism. Each extreme needs the opposite extreme to justify its own extremity. It is an invention for super sceptics who need its counterpart of super state. It is thesis and antithesis. It does not exist. Tell me the super state in the world whose annual budget is as low as 1.12% of the GDP of its constituent member states? How could a super state exist with a budget which is, relatively speaking, so puny?

I do not understand the point about aggressive Europe. Europe was not invented to give Structural Funds to Ireland or for the Common Agricultural Policy. It has all those things. Europe's raison d'être, animation and heart and soul and the vision of Monnet, Schuman, Adenauer, de Gasperi and Spaak at the beginning were clear and simple. They were the creative act of reconciliation, burying the old balance of power Europe, setting to one side the Europe which had produced two barbaric wars in the 20th century and the beginning of a new way. It is the most successful sustained peace project our Continent has ever known. It is perverse to begin to label it as some type of post or neo-imperial aggressive super state. It is counter-intuitive and unhistorical to lay that claim against today's European Union.

I want to deal with one other point about the rapid reaction force. Whether one votes "Yes" or "No" to the Nice treaty will not change that because we voted for a rapid reaction force in an earlier treaty. The rapid reaction force is not a European army or a standing army. It is a standby commitment by member states to commit on paper one brigade of 850 troops, in our case, potentially for one year in a field of operations. The standby commitment is at the absolute discretion, if it should become actionable, of the Government and the Houses of the Oireachtas. The European Commission, Council of Ministers, European Parliament or any other external body has zero control and authority to send one Irish troop on one mission for one day. There is nothing in the treaty which alters any one of those things in the manner I have just stated.

I have noticed in some of the opinion polls I have read that many Irish women feel cautious about connecting to a "Yes" vote. I have come to the view during my canvassing – it is like the Aer Rianta matter – that I could talk to Irish women about gender equality and improvements in Europe, but that is not what is worrying them. In Tullamore last Saturday afternoon I met a grandmother, her two adult daughters and her grandchildren who were in go-carts. They asked me about conscription. Their feminine values centred around conscription rather than gender. Many women I meet are worried about conscription, war and the military super state rather than gender. There is nothing in any European treaty or the Nice treaty which gives any power to conscript any Irish citizen or the citizens of anywhere else. I can look my own children, boys and girls, in the eye at home and tell them with the absolute certainty of my conviction, reason and knowledge that I am not doing anything which will see them conscripted. I could tell that to anyone else's child also. We must give that message to people in order that it is clearly understood. It is one of the issues raised by women.

Of all the elements creatively transforming our old Continent today, none is more dramatic than the truly continental scale enlargement now at hand. This is the first time in millennia when Europe is uniting around common values, not at the point of a sword or from the barrel of a gun, but by the free will of free and sovereign peoples. What an extraordinary moment of reconciliation and history. The picture is now clear. From yesterday ten states, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Cyprus and Malta, are ready. The question is, are the 15 member states or the Irish ready? The time to bring closure to this historic moment has come.

This will dramatically enhance European stability and environmental policy. People here are worried about Chernobyl and its consequences for us. Do Members know there are similar RBMK style reactors operating today at Ignalina in Lithuania? Do Members know that by us engaging the Lithuanians in the enlargement process we have negotiated to shut those down? We are already benefiting, even if we did not know that. Security is not all about military and defence; it is also about issues such as nuclear safety and cross-border trafficking in crime. Enlargement is part of the solution to those issues, not part of the problem. We are bringing people into the same rule of law and method. For many of Europe's contemporary challenges, enlargement is part of the solution.

Economically, it is a win-win situation. When the accession states did their first Europe agreement with us in 1994, they bought €160 million worth of Irish goods. Last year as they grew, we grew with them. They bought €1.2 billion worth of Irish goods. Two years ago I visited Warsaw and Enterprise Ireland had an office growing Irish companies, not American companies, in central and eastern Europe. Do Members know that two years ago Irish foreign direct investment in Poland was worth more than €1 billion? Ireland is growing. It is a win-win situation.

There are obstacles left, such as budgets in agriculture, the hope for a comprehensive settlement in Cyprus and the complex border crossing issues between Kaliningrad, which is part of the Russian Federation, and Russia because Lithuania and Poland will surround it when they join the European Union and Russia will become separated from its hinterland.

Of all the challenges the most difficult is the Nice treaty. The others can be negotiated, whereas the Nice treaty is not negotiable as it is a constitutional, institutional order. The challenge is clear. We, in Ireland, did not ask to be faced with this choice. In an extraordinary way a confluence of events has brought us to this.

If I could pick an image to represent the choice for Ireland on the enlargement question, it would be this. Faced with a unique choice at this critical time and as the last to make this choice, will we, the people – not we, the politicians – choose to remove the last brick from the Berlin Wall or will we go back to an older Ireland which, while it can no longer work, continues to have charms and history, take the booty, climb into the round tower, pull up the ladder and close the door? There was a time when that worked, this is not it. We have that choice as a people and I believe we will choose wisely.

This time we also have the choice to put in our Constitution, an Bunreacht, the basic law, the right of the people to take ownership of the defence process in future and refuse to allow a Government to enter into a defence pact if one were to come about in the future. The people can claim that right by voting "Yes".

I refer to my earlier remark about experience. Does experience matter? Ireland's experience in Europe has been overwhelmingly positive. The experienced voices in this debate, as opposed to some of the others who argue for a "No" vote, need at least to be listened to in the light of their experience, not just in terms of the quantity of arguments. The approach by which one says, "Give me three points for and three points against or ten points for and ten points against the treaty," denatures the quality of reason itself and should not be our primary way of doing things.

I will close by quoting the prayer of the Scottish poet, Robbie Burns. I will not try to put on a Scottish accent or use the exact words of his old Scottish English style:

Would that God the gift would give us

to see ourselves as others see us.

The eyes of Europe are upon us. We now have a date, a rendezvous, with history, with an unparalleled act of European reconciliation and, uniquely, it is we, the people, who choose. As it is in our interests economically and because it is the right thing to do morally, politically and historically, I hope, with all my passion and conviction, this country that I love and which I am so proud to represent will find the generosity of spirit which I believe is ours. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.

Mr. Cox referred to Article 133 which has been completely abused in the argument. It is important to take this matter further and perhaps he could save me some research by putting it in context. It appears that Article 133 removes the right to exercise the veto in certain areas. One of the issues to which majority voting has been extended is workers' rights and related matters, including the determination of how the European Union will cast its vote in the World Trade Organisation. Will he confirm that the European Union is the only representative body sitting at the WTO table which is making the case for core labour standards to be included in international agreements? It is of great importance to Irish workers, including those in Aer Rianta, that they should be protected in this way.

Regarding President Cox's historical reference to the round tower, in deference to the poor people in those times, that is an unfair and regrettable simile in the sense that those people who went to the top of the round tower were not carrying their booty with them. They were hoping that the few items they possessed would not become someone else's booty.

I am told that one has greater freedom in this House than in the other House and that I can say something now I did not say three months ago. On issues such as tax harmonisation, I have come to believe that there is serious merit for Ireland in having tax harmonisation because I cannot see how it can be in our interests that countries of eastern Europe such as Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania may have no corporation tax, as may be the case in a few years' time. It is in Ireland's interest to harmonise rates of corporation tax, not rigidly but at least to have in place a structure that allows us to ensure there is fair competition within the European Union.

I have two views about its content. There is in it a charming absurdity that after voting twice against something some official thinks that the political class in Ireland can make a declaration contrary to the consequences of the choice of the Irish people. The fact that we are trying twice is already a source of some irritation and argument to a significant minority of the electorate. The idea that we could say in advance that even if the people do not vote "Yes", we will come up with a formula that obviates and ignores the result is a perverse notion. Even if we did that, it is something that superficially is attractive in regard to form but is devoid of content.

I will make that more concrete by giving an example. The accession treaty for Poland after Nice will indicate to Poland that it will be able to have 50 MEPs. Why? Because Poland is the same size as Spain, which under the treaty has 50 MEPs. Having moved around at the table to make room for others, all member states' MEPs are pro rata to scale. On that one issue, will everyone agree to allow Poland have 50 MEPs or its voting weight in the Council predicated on the comparative voting weights of others, which are in the Nice treaty?

With regard to the content, this story is revealed for the superficial nonsense it is. I would be interested for someone in the European Commission, who has a responsibility, a face and a name, to deal with that issue at that level. It is absurd to ask the Dáil to express itself in such a manner. Of course, we are for enlargement and the people who intend to vote "No" say they are for enlargement. In that case, such a proposition is devoid of any real substance and meaning.

That brings me to Senator Bradford's question on what this treaty is about. It is a simple treaty in one way. It is about institutional arrangements, not new competencies, but it is essential. When we got together in Amsterdam in 1996 no new state was negotiating for membership, but it was thought that four or five or, maybe at a stretch, six of them might go through that staggering act of transformation of their societies, economies, politics and law to do that. They are so up for it in central and eastern Europe that it was not four or five. Some 12 of them are doing it and ten of them have done it so well that they are ready. It was an act of rational preparation to recognise that the old assumption was wrong and that the new order would have more than five joining. They all agreed that if the Union enlarged to a point where there were more than 20 at the table, the Amsterdam formula, they would have to come back and look at the size of the Commission and the Parliament and vetoes. That is what they have done in Nice. That is not just my word.

A great approach in journalism is to answer the who, what, why, when and where question – the basics. Who decided this? Some 15 Heads of Government and State. What did they decide? All of this formula that we have been discussing this morning. Where did they decide it? In Helsinki. When did they decide it? In December 1999, a year before the Nice treaty was even properly negotiated. Why did they decide it? Because they knew the European Union they were facing today would be larger than the four or five new states who were ready to join. That is the answer to the who, what, why, when and where question. That is the reality and it is a proper piece of strategic political management.

Senator Mooney raised a question on which I touched in The Irish Times about where this fits. I will try to answer it. Let me make an Irish point. Over a long period, however we run the clock – and it is most popular to run our colonial clock for about 800 years – one thing is clear. There was never a time when the entire continent of Europe held its breath for an Irish choice. This too is a measure of the power of connected sovereignty and of its wider capacity to influence.

On the question of the democratic deficit, there are two aspects – the European and the domestic. I read an article some weeks ago in The Irish Times which hammered the European process for its lack of democracy. It stated that we would have so few MEPs that there would be no point in electing them. If I thought that, I would have stayed in bed since I was elected in 1989 and not bothered to get up. If we as a small state think that, we should not be in the UN, the OECD, or at Johannesburg. We should just pack it in. We do not believe that. The article was wrong in those terms.

Let me speak about the European Union and all of the EU-knocking copy. Every multilateral engagement of this State – the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the OECD, any of the sub-organisations of the UN – is conducted through government and diplomacy. There is some democratic accountability to the Houses of the Oireachtas but it is modest in proportion to the volume of work that goes on. The European Union is the only multilateral engagement by this State where there is a panoply of democratic accountability built into its heart in constitutional terms, and a rigorous system of judicial review as a parallel and separate exercise. None of the other multilateral agencies and bodies with which we are engaged has that characteristic. Already, therefore, by that measure, in terms of international engagement, it is already recognisably more democratic. There is work to do. However, the missing link is a greater role for national parliaments. That hinges on the future.

One of the big debates on convention in the future is how to connect national parliaments to the European legislative process. Let me conflate those issues in a certain way. We must go beyond the point of treating European Union policy as foreign policy. I know that foreign ministries and ministers like the package because it is part of their territory – and I make no point about our own Minister for Foreign Affairs. However, issues I mentioned earlier – health and safety, gender equality, environment protection, the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation, etc. – are domestic. They are now deeply embedded in Irish public policy. We need a new way to deal with Europe. Ministers with responsibility for European affairs should take on the European role with much more vigour and, specifically, with more direct regular and constant accountability to and control by national parliaments.

As President of the European Parliament, I believe it is possible, feasible and desirable that the European Commission's annual legislative programme should not only be discussed by the European Parliament but should be transmitted in sufficient time to national parliaments to allow them to express views on the nature of a proposed package and any concerns they have. There is active consideration as to whether, in order to protect subsidiarity, because it is floating like a balloon today and is not tied down, a national parliament should be given the right to go to the European Court of Justice if it believes some clauses of EU law go further than EU transnationality requires. That is not a settled debate but an active one.

My second response is that Europe is self aware. It is not a question of the three monkeys hearing, seeing and speaking no evil. We are working on trying to reform. We are listening and that operates at a dual level, nationally and internationally.

Senator O'Toole raised the question of the veto. In 30 years, Ireland has used the veto only once, in regard to the milk super-levy in the 1980s. We do not use the veto because the veto is not only the nuclear button – and one does not press nuclear buttons often – but it would be, for a small state, the worst way to represent our interests. To do so would be to create a stick for others to beat us with in terms of our own interests. We do not use the veto because we are intelligent and intelligence demands that one does not represent one's interests by holding up everything and being the odd one out.

The alternative is to win friends, influence people and build relationships. Qualified majority voting does that. One piece of data I have seen – although more than this number of qualified majority votes have gone through – shows that in 198 of the first 205 reports and directives that went through on qualified majority votes, Ireland found itself with the majority. The upcoming vote is not a recipe for some kind of national meltdown. On the contrary, if we get this vote right, we will have many more friends to look after us, especially in Central and Eastern Europe.

Senator O'Toole is correct in saying that Article 133 promotes workers' rights and labour and environmental standards as part of the European intellectual argument being brought to the World Trade Organisation. It promotes them on the basis of qualified majority because it does not want social Luddites to burn off the prospect of Europe representing its own workers and their interests in a correct and proper manner.

I think that answers the questions that were raised.

I attended a public meeting in Dublin last night and met a gentleman who told me that he voted "No" in the previous referendum but this time he was going to vote "Yes" because he has discovered that the European Parliament had introduced a law which will ensure that he gets to see all of Ireland's soccer matches on terrestrial television. He wants to take a stand against Sky and feels the most effective way of doing that is to vote "Yes". That is a very practical experience for a citizen.

The difficulty with Europe is unsettling because it is unsettled. If one asks what is Europe's geographical boundary, the honest answer is unclear, except that the boundary is moving further east and getting bigger. If one asks what is Europe as an idea, the boundaries are fascinating. For example, there are passionate arguments in the European Parliament about the accession of Turkey. We can all make lovely speeches about the need for a dialogue of civilisations. Turkey is a secular republic, but it is the only Islamic state wishing to join Europe. As Europeans, are we capable of having a boundary which is beyond Judeo-Christianity? That is a different kind of boundary. These boundaries are unsettled and therefore unsettling.

We need a long period of consolidation to allow the project to bed-in and to stop producing piecemeal treaties. We negotiated the Treaty of Nice because it dealt with issues that were left over from the Amsterdam treaty. We had the Treaty of Amsterdam because some issues were not dealt with in the Treaty of Maastricht when the Union got around to producing a big treaty. It is about time that we drew a line under that. The convention is listening to submissions and analysing them; it is not yet drafting documents.

One of my heroes in Europe today is Vaclav Havel. I love his writings and his speeches and I have a signed copy of a book of his speeches. He is a wonderfully literate man. Mr. Havel addressed the European Parliament and spoke with great passion and skill about the need to give soul to Europe. Soul is found in values. It is not found in the dense detail surrounding qualified majority voting, etc. Mr. Havel has an idea which I believe is worth considering. He states that if one visits any American school, one will see a copy of the bill of rights hanging on the wall and he asks if there is something that connects an intelligent schoolchild in Europe with a basic notion of the nature of the EU? The answer is "No" not because the information is not available, but because it is lost in such dense detail and has not been simplified or made readily accessible.

Regardless of whether new powers are conferred, I hope the position will be clarified in order that people will be informed as to the objectives and values they share as Europeans and the rights to which they are entitled within the European Union and so that they can know who does what within the EU, the nature of the system of checks and balances and the circumstances in which they can take a case to court if they have a problem. If we could put forward a document explaining the nature of the EU in fairly plain and not excessively legal language – I accept that it would be a legal document – we would do ourselves a major favour. If I could address a classroom full of intelligent young Irish schoolchildren and leave them with a reasonable impression of what the European Union is, would that not be wonderful? That is the vision of Vaclav Havel and I believe he is on to something.

The charter of fundamental rights and the European Convention on Human Rights are both being negotiated at present. The question arises as to whether we would end up with jurisdictional disputes between the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. In addition, it has been stated that the European Union has no standing in law internationally and if it was to sign for its own work – the Convention on Human Rights – it needs to be given a legal personality. The Council of Europe would then need to change its rules to allow a collectivity, which is not a state, to connect. This is quite a complex legal issue. Whether a charter which is judicial in nature will emerge remains to be seen, but the preference of the European Parliament is that, subject to whatever overhaul the text would need in legal terms, Europe must tell its citizens their rights vis-à-vis when it acts in their name, the effect this will have on their fundamental rights and that it should be for those citizens an empowerment exercise.

One cannot connect with citizens by making bland speeches about the existence of a democratic deficit. That is only balderdash. One connects with citizens by discussing real things in their lives such as the behaviour of Sky Television. The gentleman to whom one of the Senators referred earlier can vote "Yes" in the referendum on the Nice treaty because the Television Without Frontiers Directive has been in place for many years. Who insisted on the inclusion of the relevant clause? It was not the Commission. The European Parliament, through engaging in process of co-legislation and practical politics, tabled an amendment – based on the fact many people could not afford to pay for satellite television channels – to give states the right to legislate, if they so choose, to make free what would otherwise be charge to air.

Senator Norris has already corrected me for slightly distorting the words of James Joyce while maintaining the essential meaning. I will now misquote Bertholt Brecht who had a wonderful line, apropos of Senator Dardis's earlier question, to the effect that "You cannot change the people". One can change the vote or the question posed in a referendum, but one cannot change the people. The people at The Irish Times should read Bertholt Brecht and they would not make mistakes.

Senator Norris also referred to the question of independence, military action, etc. If he consults the consecutive treaties, he will see that there is a consciousness that Europe needs to do more about foreign policy, security and defence. Let us not deny that fact because it is rooted in the Maastricht treaty. Why was it included in the treaty? The answer is that Europe is self-aware. This came about in the early 1990s when two faces of post-communist Europe were emerging. First, those interested in reconciliation, who were knocking on Ireland's door looking for us to say "Yes", and, second, the ugly brute force of the Republika Srpska, Mr. Milosevic's greater Serbia, with rape as a weapon of war and ethnic cleansing.

There is a reason I believe it was worth including certain clauses in the treaties and making them part of the law. At the time in question, the European Parliament and the Union itself sent numerous resolutions back and forth, provided humanitarian aid and saw to it that lightly armed UN troops were given a mandate to enter Bosnia Herzegovina. I was attending a session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg in July 1995 when the UN troops were driven out by the Serbs and 8,000 people, because they were Muslim and male, were taken out and slaughtered. From that moment, as an act of conscience, I could not tolerate the failure or absence of capacity of the EU to have resolve with good authority.

This is not a matter of discussing imperial or post-imperial wars. I do not want Europe to be an imperial lion, but I also do not want it to be a paper tiger. We have an obligation to be good neighbours but we stood by in 1995 and did not intervene. A modest intervention – I am not talking about going to war – could have removed the tin-pot dictators with their several tanks from power and could have prevented the slaughter of 8,000 people. Such an intervention would have resolved matters as readily as the passing of resolutions.

I am satisfied that we could have a rapid reaction force, which we may or may not use. However, I guarantee Members from my reading of the treaty that it contains nothing which imposes an external obligation to participate. It is absolutely – I use that word carefully – the right of this State, the Houses of the Oireachtas and the Government to make that judgment. No one else owns that right. That is why the Nice treaty is not a defence pact that sucks nations in, willy-nilly, regardless of whether they want to be involved.

The Senator also referred to the declaration. This has no worth in law, but it has worth in another way. The law was as I described it, but in our debate it was sold as being something else. The declaration by the Government is not a change in the law of the treaty, but a clarification in reasonably plain English of what was not contained in the treaty, namely, that Ireland was not being informed by other member states that it must do as they tell it. The declaration represents a belt and braces approach. It is not that it is a law; it is merely the plain man's guide to that law. As a final backstop, the Government is saying to the people that they have the right to make a choice on any further evolution of European defence. I guarantee that they can vote with a good conscience, in the way I have described, in favour of the Nice treaty in the knowledge that they will be capable, perhaps, in the future of being able to prevent things from happening.

I am so proud that last summer Europe, acting with the United States and Macedonia, helped suppress a terrorist campaign instigated by the UCK among the minority Albanian community in Macedonia. The UCK's arms were taken from it through a brokered deal and the European Union helped to write a new pluralist constitution. We stopped in Macedonia, by making a stitch in time, all the things we were partly guilty of allowing to happen in Bosnia. I am glad that the Senator's reasoning and conviction have brought him to the position he described and I congratulate him on it.

Senator Hayes stated that he is glad we are in the European Union because he can watch Ireland's matches on television while Senator Ormonde referred to people who inquire about the reasons Europe appears to be telling us what to do. Let me clarify matters with regard to when the European Union make a law and who is responsible for making such law. The Commission is the drafting office and is responsible for initiating legislation. It usually does so when it is asked by the Council and it is not the case that those employed by the Commission sit about every day trying to decide what law they should draft. The Commission can only make laws where a treaty gives it competence to do so. Who provides that competence via the treaties? The states who ratify them. We own the treaties and, in that sense, we own what we gave the Commission.

I was asked if a proposal, when it comes before the Commission, is dealt with by a faceless bureaucrat. The answer is "No". It is sent to the Council of Ministers so that each state can play its role and it is also sent to the European Parliament which provides a counter-balance. Only at the end of a double reading process – somewhat similar to the multi-readings that occur here – can a proposal become law. We are not discussing old colonialism or the need to bend the knee or tip the forelock. We are not concerned with that kind of Ireland. Ours is an Ireland that plays an active role, in its own interests, at every forum; it is not the old Ireland. In that sense, the perspective of the interlocutor to whom reference was made may be understandable but, in my view, it is not sustainable.

Senator Hayes asked if neo-nationalism indicates a failure of Europe. In relation to fears about the globalisation issue, it is my view that Europe empowers us more than it disempowers us. The alternative of having to confront WTO issues on our own does not bear thinking about.

In Ireland and other places, there is much debate on the issue of migration, immigration and asylum seekers. This causes reactions which are then exploited by reactionary forces. That debate challenges Ireland and Europe to look at the north-south divide in the world. Given the state of poverty in Africa, what else would a rational African do, even at the peril of his life, but try and get to a richer place to the north? There is a challenge and an answer which is not the populist answer. Mr. Haider won more votes in Austria for extension of Austrian corporatism than for nazism. It is an incredibly corporatist state – to the extent that one has to be a card-carrying member to be employed as a school janitor or in a sub post office. Of course that would never happen in Irish politics but Senators will appreciate my point.

There are other issues, including the Habitats Directive which, according to our relevant Ministers, cannot be changed. In those circumstances there will be ongoing dissatisfaction with Europe, as manifested in the present referendum campaign. We cannot ignore the degree of anger among our electorate, much of which relates to the failure of the Government to be honest with people. My only request to the President of the European Parliament is that Europe should be honest with Ireland.

Mr. Cox may be aware of the local radio station in his native Limerick and the chat shows broadcast on it. He may also be aware that there has been concern on the question of immigration. He has given an assurance here that there will not be a mass influx of immigrants into this country. I understand Germany and Austria have a provision not allowing immigrants from accession states into their countries until six years after accession. They are the natural hinterland to the new accession states and when the Berlin Wall came down, they embraced those countries. It is natural for Germany to identify with them rather than the European Union as we knew it. Unlike Germany and Austria, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Ireland have allowed free access from day one. Was that free access guaranteed in the first Nice treaty referendum – even though it was defeated – and has it been changed for this Nice treaty referendum? If so, why did we decide to accept it? When the working time directive was introduced, Ireland accepted it automatically but the United Kingdom sought a derogation. Quite often, we can be a bit over enthusiastic as Europeans.

I congratulate Mr. Cox on an excellent address. There is much disinformation coming from both sides in this referendum campaign, but I am confused about one matter in particular. How does the onward march of various treaties affect our ongoing relationship with the United States? As Mr. Cox will know, the boom in this economy was to a large extent US-led. Does our accession to the Nice treaty mean anything to the multinational companies because there seem to be conflicting signals coming from them as to what they would prefer Ireland to do? The only thing that matters to them – apart from the young educated workforce – is the tax code. Will this in any way affect that tax rate and are there other influences in the Nice treaty which might cause us to vote one way or the other on the issue of multinational influence in the economy?

In the mid-1970s I taught 16 to18 year old girls next door to a male teacher teaching the same age group. We taught the same subjects yet he was paid a quarter more.

Senator Higgins observed that there is Constitution and treaty fatigue. I am not sure what name will be given at the end. The exercise has characteristics of being constitutional. If there are objectives, values, rights, directions as to who does what and checks and balances then that is what is found in a Constitution. If Members of the Seanad went to a politics class in Trinity College, UCD or any of the other institutions of learning in the State and asked the lecturer what a Constitution is, the answer would be as I have just described it. I am not sure whether it will be called a basic law, a Constitution or the constitutionalisation of Europe. One of the risks if we do call it a Constitution is that people might say they are happy with the Constitution they have and ask why it is being taken away and they are being given something different. It is not a taking away exercise. It is a simplification and clarification exercise. The name may matter lest people represent in a false way, or misrepresent entirely, what the purpose would be.

Senator Kenneally spoke about the economy and influence and wondered if we are having too much debate on both and not enough other debate. Today I went to great lengths to talk about a Europe of values because it matters. It is wrong that we give the impression to our population that the only people with values as citizens are people who want to vote "No". Why should we conceive the values debate as if somehow we did not have values because we believe in the value of connection with the European Union? Cohesion, the International Criminal Court, Kyoto and the value of peace and reconciliation are important to us. Pluralist democracy, the promotion of openness and respect for human rights and judicial separation are values we are helping to bring, underpin, sustain and develop in the newly re-independent states.

I do not say this with arrogance. These are good people and we should not, as western Europeans, approach them from a high plateau. History kicked them down through fascism and brute force under Hitler and Stalinism. In Hungary one will meet many wonderful people who survived the ravages of 1956. I have sat in parliamentary committees in the Seimas, the parliament in Vilnius in Lithuania, with men my age who were born in Siberia to parents sent there because they would not toe the line. There are wonderful people there. We may have material wealth but I hope we will show solidarity with these people who have real soul and values. These people have been in prison for values we only talk about. This is a special moment for me and these values matter.

I think I softened the cough of the Aer Rianta man but I do not know which way he will jump. Several Senators touched on the question of the directives that get us down. I will approach it in two ways, one by the way. I am not naive. There are things we will like or lump about any negotiated order. It is in our nature. In this House there are things Senators like or lump about how the House proceeds, let alone wider public policy. I insist, however, that we cannot cop out and say they did it to us. We are there from the moment a directive is drafted. There is no point in pretending a faceless individual in Brussels sent a habitats directive to Ireland through perversity. The Government was there from the beginning. It went through the European Parliament.

Let me take the habitats directive as an area where I would like to see a loosening up. In the late 1980s the community council in Doonbeg got the idea to talk to Shannon Development and try and build a golf course. Shannon Development found someone to do it and it was designed by Greg Norman. Someone came to do an environmental impact study. He lifted the sea grass on the proposed links course and found a snail in it. I went down and met this gentleman. The snail is a large family man and there are large tracts of these families of snails blotted around the place. Nobody knew the snail was there because it stays under the grass. It is about half the size of my small fingernail and its Latin name is vertigo angustior. This snail was all over the place so I went down to the community council with a great question for a politician. Does Brussels believe more in us or snails? I said that what Brussels was trying to do is to promote development and sustainability at the same time.

I took the community council leaders to Brussels to meet the so-called faceless bureaucrats. They are not faceless, they are easy to reach when our elected representatives open doors and make introductions. We found a solution and the snail continues to thrive as a good family man in Doonbeg. Those who believe in snail family values can be happy and the golf course will be developed in Doonbeg.

We are fond of saying we approve of certain measures introduced as a result of European initiatives, such as gender equality legislation. I am pleased that my wife is in the Visitors Gallery, as we rarely get to spend such time together as a consequence of my busy political life. We are married just long enough for me to be able to say she had to leave her job when we got married, which was the old way of doing things. We are proud of changes in gender legislation, but are inclined to believe we are responsible for enlightened measures. It is easy to say one's country is responsible for enlightenment, but then to blame Brussels for bad news. Brussels can never win because enlightenment is seen as domestic and its absence as external. As long as we engage in such nonsense, we will never have a balanced picture. I agree that the European Union should not be involved in issues such as the Doonbeg snail. I ask Dúchas to look after such matters.

Senator Minihan mentioned the issue of sovereignty. His references to multilateral and unilateral approaches were interesting. Sovereignty is not immutable. There was a time when sovereignty was the divine right of kings, bestowed by God. If an act of regicide was committed, it was then considered that the divine right did not come from God, but from parliament. The sovereign parliaments, however, consisted of only male landowners, as only they were seen as sufficiently intelligent and strategically minded to know what to do. Sovereignty was then passed to men in general, but women were not trusted with the right to vote until the advent of universal suffrage. Éamon de Valera was one of the early advocates of the League of Nations after the First World War, when an attempt was made to recognise that multilateralism might work better than power politics and imperialism.

Sovereignty, therefore, is not immutable; it is not a flame that does not change and blow. In a more connected world, isolated sovereignty is not much use. Intelligent interdependence and connections make sense. Those who put sovereignty in the freezer and only take it out for an occasional look while keeping it frozen miss the point that sovereignty is a dynamic that can change. My sense of sovereignty touches a little on a point made by Senator Ross to which I will return. Our choice is not between Boston and Berlin or Brussels. Our choice is to scalp the best percentage going in each space. We should not think that we have to align ourselves with the European Union or the United States. We can take the best of everywhere and add it to Irish genius and talent, in an act of creative reconciliation, in our own self-interest.

Senator Finucane spoke of immigration in the context of the Nice treaty referendum campaign. I agree with the Senator that there is no point is using wild language and that our task is to explain and reassure. Every time I speak to an audience such as today's I say, "mea culpa" and apologise for last year's result. Others could make a similar apology and acknowledge, like me, that they did not do enough last year. Nature abhors a vacuum and the vacuum caused by the lack of argument on the "Yes" side on that occasion was filled with dubious ideas which we must now challenge.

A respected German institute has produced some interesting figures on immigration. During the first ten years after Polish re-independence, 900,000 people left Poland, a country with a population of 38.5 million. Of those 900,000 people, 600,000 returned to Poland before the end of the decade. Therefore, the net amount of Polish emigrants was 300,000. Just as most Irish people went to Britain, 74% of the 300,000 Poles settled in neighbouring Germany and Austria, countries with a common land border. The German and Austrian Governments, in an attempt to prevent Mr. Haider and his German equivalents from using immigration as a political football, asked the Commission and the Council of Ministers for breathing space. In the 1980s the French Government thought that many Spanish and Portuguese citizens would move to France, but the issue had died of natural causes within two years. Like the Irish, the Spanish and Portuguese prefer to live near their families, if afforded the opportunity of living at home. They are fond of their local football team or pub.

Free movement of citizens has not been a problem in the past and I do not suspect that it will become a problem in Ireland. Eastern Europeans have been free to travel here with a passport since the fall of communism. Why should the Government be concerned about this? I do not wish to suggest that it iss not concerned about the people of Ireland, but there is no empirical or factual basis, if one examines the history of the State, to cause us to get wound up about this issue. I do not believe free movement of citizens will become an issue, but if it should come to pass, Ireland will still have the right to ask for an interim measure similar to that demanded by Germany and Austria. The State made a perfectly rational decision and I do not believe it needs to be revisited as it is not causing us any problems.

We are entitled to reject or accept certain European initiatives while still being regarded as good Europeans. The European Union did not ban Irish sheep during the foot and mouth disease crisis because the Government reacted to the problem with force, by closing all possibilities of spreading or transmitting the disease. This country's determination was so great and its success so considerable that the capacity to avoid a ban was created. Goodwill alone would not have been enough.

Senator Ross asked about relationships. I am sorry he had to leave. As I said, I am not interested in spurious arguments about Boston or Berlin, as we can have the best of both. We must creatively make the best use of our position between the United States and Europe, pulled in each way by history and moment. I am a strong believer in the transatlantic relationship. When I visited Capitol Hill this year, I was the first President of the European Parliament to do so for ten years. The trade and investment relationship between the European Union and the United States is the only one in the world worth more than $1 billion. There is too much worth preserving in the relationship to place it in jeopardy. Although I have problems with the US Administration's current drift towards unilateralism, I am determined to keep the link strong.

In response to Senator Ross, I refer to the recent comments of the chief executive of General Electric in Europe, who said his company would have a slightly more negative view of Ireland if it seemed that we were psychologically disconnecting from our winning formula. In a speech to the Dáil on 4 September last the Minister for Finance referred to a report of the Economist Intelligence Unit which stated another "No" vote against the Nice treaty, regardless of the detail of the treaty and the motives of individual voters, would send the message that Ireland was pulling back from Europe. The EIU stated such a move in a country that was "a strategic and certain ally" would be bad news for Ireland.

The challenge of bringing EU affairs closer to citizens was mentioned by many speakers. As I said, the Houses of the Oireachtas have to be a more active part of this process by becoming involved in discussions on EU legislation. While the Oireachtas has the right to deal with EU matters, it may not have the best means of doing so, after 30 years as a member state. Members should talk to the Danes and Finns because they have the two best models I have seen in terms of ongoing and active parliamentary accountability at this level before the snail and other directives are transposed.

I thank Senator O'Rourke very much for the invitation she extended and the work she has done. She referred to stopping enlargement. The momentum of enlargement is so great and the weight of history behind it so enormous that it will happen, but its moment is fragile. I have been to every accession state seeking to join our Union many times and they look to our country as a role model to which they aspire in a certain way because we are the poor guys on the edge who caught up.

That is a decent aspiration but political leaders in accession states have been going through a transformation for which I do not know whether we would have had the stomach or neck. They are taking entire industries such as steel and coal in one swoop and telling their representatives they cannot survive in the competitive world and they are moving on. Extraordinary leadership has been provided by a generation of central Europeans and they are looking to us. We will not stop the momentum, but we could damage the moment. The elasticity of the expectations of people in these states is finite and if we stretch it to breaking point, we could release energies and forces mentioned earlier which are another part of Europe's personality.

As humans and as a society there is something of the day and of the night in all of us. The EU and reconciliation through enlargement is something of the day, but if we get the timing wrong, there are forces in existence that belong to the European night. They are a virus. Please God let the virus not spread.

Mar a dúirt mé cheana féin, lá stairiúil í seo domsa agus ar son Parlaimint na hEorpa gabhaim mo chéad míle buíochas don Chathaoirleach agus don Seanad. Tá seanfhocal ann, "an té nach bhfuil láidir, ní foláir dó bheith glic". An rud ceart le déanamh anois ná vótáil "Tá" agus a bheith glic.