Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 6 May 1992

Vol. 419 No. 2

An Bille Um An Aonú Leasú Déag ar an mBunreacht, 1992: An Dara Céim (Atógáil). Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1992: Second Stage (Resumed).

Thairg an Taoiseach an tairiscint seo a leanas Dé Máirt, 5 Bealtaine 1992:

"Go léifear an Bille don Dara Uair."

The following motion was moved by the Taoiseach on Tuesday, 5 May 1992:

"That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Atógadh an díospóireacht ar leasú Uimh. 2:

Debate resumed on amendment No. 2:

To delete "now" and to add at the end of the motion "this day two weeks provided that in the meantime the Government has initiated a Government Bill or the Dáil has approved at Second Stage a Private Members Bill, to amend the Constitution providing that Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution shall not be invoked to prohibit or interfere with the exercise of the right to travel to or from the State for the purpose of receiving services lawfully available in other jurisdictions or to obtain, within the State, counselling and information relating to such services subject to such restriction as may be provided by law."

—(Deputy J. O'Keeffe.)

Mr. Lenihan

Before the break I emphasised the fact that the Treaty on European Union is a further step in a process which was initiated on 1 January 1973 after an overwhelming 83 per cent vote by our people in favour of it. This is the third such Treaty; the people agreed to the Treaty of Rome in 1972, we entered the Community in 1973 and the Single European Act was agreed to by a majority of the Irish people in 1987.

In 1973 when we entered the Community we made a decision on sharing our sovereignty. That process has started and this is another step in it. It is essential in an inter-dependent world that sovereignty is shared in the manner in which we now share it with 11 other European countries. Central, Northern and Eastern Europe now see the wisdom of the European Community as a pole of economic activity and social development. A number of countries are now seeking to join that Community fully or to be associated with it in some other manner.

In the past 20 years we have become part and parcel of this Community of 350 million people in which the law making body — or council — is composed of the representatives of the Twelve member governments. It is in our national interest to maintain full membership of this democratic club; it is not in our national interest to be part-time or second rate club members. We must be full members to make full use of the funds, advice, markets — and access to those markets — which results from full membership. Above all, our sovereign right to join in the decision-making of the Community flows from full membership. If we were not in the Community — or if we were second-class participants which would result from a "no" vote — we would not be in a decision-making position. We would not be able to make our case within the Councils of the European Community. That is the great strength of full membership and why it is imperative for us, in the national interest, to register a very substantial "yes" vote in the forthcoming referendum in order to ensure that we will continue to take our place to the fullest extent possible within the Councils of the European Community and so orientate policies, where necessary, in our direction and to our national advantage. Otherwise we are merely looking in; it is much better to be inside taking part in the action. From 1 January next we hope to have free access to what has been agreed in negotiations, a single market, the largest and strongest consumer market in the world with a prospect of exporting our goods and services without any hindrance in this market which already takes 75 per cent of our exports.

I wish to make a point which is relevant to our position in relation to jobs. Investment in jobs for the future will occur only on the basis of a stable access to this market. The main selling point that the Industrial Development Authority have in their pursuit of investment is that this country is in a favourable position within a single market to be strengthened by economic, monetary and political union. Within that market we present an attractive location for Japanese, American and other outside investors in this country. It is because of the access to that large market that industries will locate here; they will not do so on the basis of our own home market. Therefore, if we are to make any dent or improvement in relation to jobs in the years ahead it is essential to be inside the Community where we can attract the required investment to avail of our export access to that market and to establish units of industrial or service activities here which can make use of our location within the area of European Union.

European Union will represent the main attraction for potential investments in the future, using Ireland as a base for operations within the Community. The European Union Treaty has as its central aim economic and monetary union as a logical follow on from the Single Market which will obtain from 1 January next. This economic and monetary union is aimed at a single currency, an important aspect from the point of view of our export transactions and price stability and from the point of view of our exporters and production here. This single currency and price stability is guaranteed by exchange and budgetary policies which will be organised within the economic and monetary union in the framework of a European central banks system.

Other aspects in the Treaty are important. There is a new section on citizenship of the union, which is not mentioned often. All citizens of member states will be citizens of the union with the right to move freely throughout the whole union territory and will have the right to diplomatic protection from all member states. There are Articles authorising the Community to have common policies on education, professional training, youth culture, public health, protection of consumers, European networks, the environment, research and — the important new policy for Ireland — cohesion.

Thankfully from our point of view, the Treaty must be viewed as one package because it contains provisions for extra Structural and new Cohesion Funds to cater for social requirements, including education and health, as well as commitments already undertaken in regard to roads and telecommunications. In particular, our education system requires much greater funding which we cannot afford in order to interlink with our training programmes, already financed to some extent from the Social Fund. The real issue which should be faced is that huge moneys are needed to put our system of education into top gear. The development of the human resources of our young people to the maximum extent should be our priority policy target and we can only obtain the money required for this purpose from European sources.

The European Union Treaty also recognises the reality that one cannot separate politics from economics. It proposes a common foreign and security policy within the democratic framework and common citizenship of a new Europe in which the old military barriers of the Cold War have already disappeared. It is important to recognise that our neutral friends in Sweden, Finland, Austria and Switzerland are preparing to join this enlarged Europe. We welcome them as countries with the same commitment to security co-operation and a peaceful Europe as we have.

As a purposeful people our future lies in greater involvement in Europe. There is certainly no future in puting the clock back and isolating ourselves as a fringe entity, going nowhere in an increasingly interdependent world. While other countries are applying and clambering aboard the train, surely we will not stand on the platform waiting for Godot while the express train of European Union goes off down the tracks. That is not the sort of future we want for our young people. What do we want and where do we want to be as a people? That is the question facing us. Do we want to be part of a family of countries committed to growing inter-dependence in Europe as a whole or do we prefer to exclude ourselves from that process? As a people we want to be heavily involved with neighbouring countries rather than isolated in a peripheral position, making no contribution to the Community and that Community having no contribution to make to us.

Before we go to the people with the referendum we must state that the basic choice facing them is between involvement and isolation. I am certain the people will choose the path of involvement rather than isolation and thereby show their maturity in making a positive decision.

Mr. Dukes

It is a great shame that this is really the first opportunity we have had for a detailed discussion of the provisions of the Maastricht Treaty. There have been reports, debates and statements in the House in the course of last year but this is the first opportunity Members have had to discuss the contents of the Treaty. That says much about the way the Government handle issues of foreign policy in this House, not just this Government but previous ones. I look forward to the day when a Government decide that they know better than the mandarins in Iveagh House and that issues of foreign policy do not have to be surrounded in a cloak of secrecy and reticence lest we might give away any part of our negotiating position before a debate begins. Others in this House would agree with me on this matter. If the Taoiseach is interested in letting in light or opening shutters or any of the other clichés he has used in this House during the past few weeks, this should be one of the areas to which he should give his closest attention.

There is not any doubt that the Maastricht Treaty represents an enormous step forward for the European Community. It builds on 35 years of experience with the provisions of the Treaty of Rome, which have proved their worth. It builds on the experience of economic policy and in all the common policies under the Treaty of Rome. It also builds on the experience since 1978 when the European monetary system and the associated exchange rate mechanism were put in place. It is worth remembering that when those proposals were first made by the then President of the Commission, Roy Jenkins, he was laughed at for being too visionary. Now we have a serious Treaty before us which provides for economic and monetary union and, eventually, a single currency and it does not look at all improbable. Nobody regards it as laughable. There is some value even today in looking back to 1978 and recognising the contribution made by Roy Jenkins and his colleagues in the Commission. Undoubtedly we would not be having this debate today if that initiative had not been taken then.

The Maastricht Treaty also builds on the experience over many years of the system of European political co-operation, reinforced by the provisions of the Single European Act. I am delighted the Community is moving forward in this direction. It is building on all these things and on the inclusion of cohesion in the Single European Act, a notion put in there as a result of an initiative of the then Irish Government, of which I had the privilege to be a member. The member states have shown some disposition to build constructively and imaginatively on the basis of what has been achieved so far.

It would be dishonest of me to pretend that I am anything other than disappointed with the content of the Treaty. Like the Rome Treaty and the Single European Act in their day, this Treaty is too conservative and too timid for its time. I regret that member states have failed to grasp the full implications of the value of what has been achieved so far and the real need in Europe and the world for the European Community to play a greater role and act with greater determination in the economic and political fields. I have no doubt that the provisions of this Treaty, good and constructive as they are, fall short of what the member states of the European Community could achieve if we could only get Governments to rise somewhat above eternal and excessive concern with their national interests and to look at what they can achieve together rather than how much they can hinder each other's ambitions. It is a disappointment in that respect, as were the Rome Treaty and the Single European Act in their day. I am afraid that the European Community, like other politics around the world, shows a worrying lack of self-confidence when it comes to taking the next step along the way in what it sets out to achieve.

Some things have been recognised. It is clear from the provisions on economic and monetary union and on the single currency, and also from our experience with the 1992 programme and the Single Market, that the member states and their Governments have clearly understood how vital it is for the European Community to improve its capacity to compete with the United States and Japan and particularly with South East Asia. That is where a new competition in the world comes from. The people of all the member states need a European Community that can compete and co-operate more effectively with firms and interests in those countries in order to serve its own people better. I welcome the fact that the Maastricht Treaty gives us some of the tools we need to do that. That is something on which we should reflect.

There is no doubt about the proposition that a strong European Community that is effective on world markets provides by far the best framework for further growth and development in this country. It is not the full answer, by any means. If I were to be a pessimist, which I do not like being but one is perforce sometimes, I would have to say that there is a consciousness at the back of my mind that we in this country still have in our own hands the ability to throw away the benefits of a strong European Community. We have not been great at using it so far. In many aspects we have made mistakes in the way we have exploited the opportunities offered to us by the European Community, However, I have no doubt that our position is much better inside the Community than it would be outside it.

It is clear that the European Community should play a primary role in the politics of Europe. In this regard, I speak not just of the European Community but of the wider Europe that includes the countries of central and eastern Europe, the Balkans and even the States of the CIS, which is where much of the real political interest of the next decade will be centred and from where the threats to stability in our part of the world are more likely to come than anywhere else.

It is curious to reflect that although from time to time we seem to have a very inadequate view of the importance of the Community's potential role in the world, sometimes people outside seem to have a much clearer vision of what Europe can be and of the role it can play in the world. One evening last week I was travelling to Midleton to speak at a meeting about Maastricht. Until now, I have had the opportunity, as has Deputy Lenihan — which opportunity I shall shortly lose, unfortunately — of being able to read when in transit. I was reading a Chinese publication reviewing that country's foreign policy. The publication spoke of the European Community as an actor on the world stage of much greater weight than we ever ascribe to it here. Last summer I spent some time in Czechoslovakia and in Hungary, and in the past couple of years I have had the opportunity to make several very good friends in newly emerging parties in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. Almost universally among those groups, I recognise a view of the European Community that is much more respectful and appreciative of the Community's weight in world politics than is commonly found here in Ireland. That is the reason I sometimes feel a little depressed when I consider issues such as the Maastricht Treaty, listen to the kind of debate that has gone on in this country in the past few months about the Treaty and realise how inadequate is our concept of the political role that can be played by the European Community.

For my taste, the Treaty is not federalist enough. It is certainly not federalist enough in relation to the Community budget, the size of that budget or the distributive mechanisms and the level of redistribution involved in our structures. In that view I find myself in some very strange company. If I may mention names without giving any offence, people such as Emmet O'Connell and Anthony Coughlan have recently appeared on television complaining that they do not like the Maastricht Treaty because it is not federalist enough. I agree with them on that but we come to different conclusions on the head of it. I do not believe that my disappointment at the lack of real federalism in this Treaty is a reason to vote "no". It would be perverse to turn our backs on what is undoubtedly progress compared to the present situation because the step being taken is not big enough. It would be perverse to vote "no" because our ambition is that the European Community be more federalist and more redistributive in the future. At the very least, by being part of the progress — as Deputy Lenihan said a few minutes ago — we can continue the fight to make sure that the Community evolves further in that direction. By not being part of that, we would lose any argument we ever had.

On the other side of that reflection, our experience of having written cohesion into the Single European Act has been a substantial expansion in the Structural Fund. Let us remember the very good debate we had at the time. Indeed, Deputy Lenihan might well remember it because he was against the Single European Act when it was first negotiated.

Mr. Lenihan

I was not.

Mr. Dukes

I am not sure what Deputy Michael D. Higgins thought at the time but I seem to recall that he was not too complimentary about it, either. The Single European Act provided for the concept of cohesion to be written into a treaty for the first time. At the time the complaint was made that the provision was not worth the paper it was written on because no amount was shown — no money was guaranteed and no mechanism was set up in the documentation. What happened? The result, of course, was a substantial expansion in the Structural Fund, which Deputy Lenihan is now delighted to boast about.

Mr. Lenihan

That is right.

Mr. Dukes

The Deputy is right, quite an achievement has been made. I conclude that the same experience will follow from the provisions of the Maastricht Treaty. Cohesion has now been written even further and more firmly into the treaties. Of course the Treaty does not provide any guarantee of the amount of money that will come or any detailed administrative arrangement for distributing that money. The fact of the matter is that once the commitment is made in the Treaty we can be pretty sure that it will be followed up on. That has been the experience with the Single European Act and I believe that the same logic will apply to the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty.

In this general order of ideas, it is appropriate to warn against the idea of what I would call the second bite at the cherry theory, which is going around at the moment — that we should vote "no" to the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty for a series of very confused reasons and that we will have the opportunity to hold another referendum on it before the end of the year. There are all kinds of predictions about what would happen as a result of a "no" vote, and I shall come back to some of them later on, but I do not think that anybody in this House or outside it could gainsay my statement that if the Maastricht Treaty is not ratified by all 12 member states no other Treaty negotiated in the wake of that non-ratification would be as federalist as is the Maastricht Treaty. And unsatisfactory as the Treaty is in my view, I believe that the dangers of going backwards are much too great to give any credence or support to that second bite of the cherry theory which is gaining a certain spurious acceptance in the country today.

This Treaty is not federalist enough, either, in relation to its provisions on a common foreign and security policy and on co-operation on justice and home affairs. On those two issues the Treaty provides for an intergovernmental procedure; all decisions will have to be made unanimously by the representatives of 12 governments. It is not the Council of Ministers formally that will decide those things, the provision is for an intergovernmental procedure. Those issues have come to be known as the second and third pillars of European union — the first pillar being the direct line of decent from the Treaty of Rome through the Single European Act to economic and monetary union; the second pillar being intergovernmental common foreign and security policy; and the third pillar being intergovernmental co-operation in justice and home affairs.

I have no doubt, and I am very happy to admit it and accept it, that the common foreign and security policy provisions represent considerable progress and a considerable addition to what we had known in the system of European political co-operation as developed under the Single European Act. The difference in this case is one of degree rather than one of kind. We have not set up a new kind of foreign policy dimension for the European Community. What is needed is a different kind of approach. There are arguments which could be used to justify that and every argument justifies the step, limited as it is, that has been taken in relation to a common foreign and security policy in this Treaty. I will give only three examples of cases that show clearly the need for a more coherent, unified foreign policy approach by the Community.

For a period during the Gulf War member states were pulling in different directions. The European Community, for a large part of that period, did not play the kind of role in the international scene that many of its citizens would have wanted it to play in terms of contributing to a solution. Looking at what is happening today in what used to be Yugoslavia, because of different views among the member states, the European Community was slow to get off the ground and make a positive contribution there. I am not saying that the Treaty would get rid of disagreements between member states, and God forbid that it should, but it would give us a mechanism where the Community would work out differences quickly and could more quickly get into the international field in order to have a beneficial effect. The last example I will gvie that shows the need for the Community to have more effective and efficient levers in the foreign policy area, is this very deep question of the reunification of Germany. If we look at the problems there today and want to indentify one single source of economic problem which has its own retentissment or reverberations in relation to the Maastricht Treaty, it was the decision to fix an exchange rate of parity of one Ostmark to one Deutschemark. That was a political decision made, for reasons which we all understand, in the Federal Chancellory in Bonn. It was a decision that would not have been made by a European Community fully involved in that process. It was a decision that could not be influenced by a European Community that did not have the kind of levers in foreign policy that the CFSP provisions here give us. That is an example of why the European Community needs a more cohesive and unified approach to the definition of its interests, its activity in favour of its own interests and its activity in the world in favour of the objectives that have been set out here in the common foreign and security policy. It is blithely ignored by the anti-Maastricht people that the enunciation in this Treaty of the objectives of a common foreign and security policy, if shown to most Irish people without telling them where they came from, would be accepted as objectives that we should pursue in our foreign policy. I will not bore the House by reading them out.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

There will not be an opportunity for the Deputy to bore the House as I am afraid that the Deputy's time has practically gone.

Mr. Dukes

I thought I had 20 minutes.

An Ceann Comhairle

That is right. The Deputy came in at 4.03 p.m.

Mr. Dukes

When one gets involved in something like this it gets rather absorbing. We have suffered from the fact that the Government have failed to get across some very simple messages about what the Maastricht Treaty is about. Its common foreign and security policy objectives are the same as those most Irish people would have. Its objectives in relation to economic and monetary union are also the same as those most Irish people would have. The Treaty provides for certain disciplines and conditions for participation in economic and monetary union. We qualify now because they are less rigid than they are very often represented as being, but we have to make sure that we continue to qualify. There are things we would have to do anyway. We should have the ambition, or if possible the certainty, that we will keep our current deficit below 3 per cent of GNP. We should have the ambition to get our debt-GNP ratio down towards 60 per cent. We should have the ambition of keeping interest rates as close as possible to the three best in the European Community and of keeping our inflation rates close to the three best in the European Community. We will have to do those things anyway.

It is clear that it will be easier to achieve those things with the kind of support we will have within a post-Maastricht Europe. There are all kinds of predictions as to what will happen if we do not ratify this, but one thing, as sure as God made little apples, is that if we do not ratify this Treaty the net transfers to this country will be less than they would have been if the Treaty had been ratified. There is no doubt about that. We would find ourselves having to conform to these economic and fiscal disciplines with a lower level of support. That would create clear budgetary and economic problems for us. For people who are worried about economic discipline, the best answer is to have the Maastricht Treaty.

We have a complication in this and that is this infamous Protocol which I can only describe in the words of another Deputy in this House as being "grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented". It should never have been there. It has poisoned the debate for no good reason. I do not know if we will hear any explanation as to why it was put in, but I would like Deputies Haughey and Collins to come into this House and tell us how and why this Protocol came to be there. Whose idea was it? What pressure was put on them? Who did they think they were buying off by putting this Protocol into the Treaty? It would answer Deputy Haughey far better to be in here explaining that than to be sitting out there on the couch at the end of the stairs in deep conversation with Senator Hanafin. This House deserves to know why this Protocol was put in. I followed all the legal arguments that have been made about the possible implications of that Protocol and the only conclusion I can come to is that there is no certainty either way about the effect of this Protocol. It has created a doubt in people's minds. When all the legal arguments have been gone through and have been assessed and when we have seen all the latest coruscations of brilliance from the lawyers, there remains the question. "Why is this Protocol there?" That is a political question which deserves an answer.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair must cherish all its children equally in the matter of time.

Mr. Dukes

I will conclude on this. This is much more than just a political question. It is an emotional question. It matters at a very deep emotional level to virtually all the women I have spoken to in the last few weeks and, I am glad to say, to a good many of the men as well. Until there is an answer to that question there will be suspicion and unease. I warned the Government against falling for this siren song of having a substantive amendment to replace Article 40.3.3º. I hope they will heed that warning. I do not know whether this famous tail will wag the dog again. They claim to have done it in relation to Deputy Lenihan and Deputy McDaid. They moved only after this side of the House and my party in particular alerted them to the danger. But I am alerting both parties in Government to this danger: do not fall for that request for what is called an amendment on the substantive issue of abortion. It is nothing more and nothing less than a request from the people who got it wrong in 1983, the people who got it wrong in 1991 to be allowed the honour, privilege and freedom of getting it wrong again. We cannot impose that on the women of this country. We certainly cannot impose that on the European Community that is in every respect an innocent victim of that kind of irredentism and obscurantism raising its head again in this debate, being facilitated by the Government that has this insane Protocol in this Treaty.

Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach (Mr. T. Kitt)

I wish to touch on four aspects of the Maastricht Treaty — the amendments tabled by Opposition parties including that relating to Article 40.3.3º of the Constitution; the new Treaty provisions on culture; the benefits for women of Community membership and particularly, of the Treaty on European Union and, if time permits, the provisions relating to Economic and Monetary Union and Cohesion.

On Article 40.3.3º, I will confine my remarks to the relevant amendments put forward by a number of Opposition Deputies to the motion before this House. Part 1 (a) of the amendment put forward by Deputy De Rossa and others proposes that the Maastricht Treaty should be renegotiated so as to secure the deletion of Protocol 17 in order to defend the rights of Irish women. The answer to that is quite simple. It is not an option.

The EC General Affairs Council held in Luxembourg on 6 April has already made it clear that they will not reopen the Maastricht Treaty or its Protocols because to do so could leave the way open to pressures in other member states for other amendments. It was at that Council that Ireland sought agreement to an intergovernmental conference to amend Protocol No. 17. Our partners were unable to agree to convene such a conference at this stage, while ratification is proceeding in the various member states. This is the issue, this is the obstacle — convening an intergovernmental conference. According to the most authoritative legal opinion at Community level deletion of the Protocol would also involve an intergovernmental conference and would meet with the same fundamental objection. Despite the speculation of some legal commentators there is no other legal procedure available, apart from an Intergovernmental Conference. It might be said: could not one be invented for an unprecedented situation? This fails to face up to the political basis of our partners' objections to any change in the Treaty now, while their ratification procedures are proceeding: even the Solemn Declaration has led to political pressure in at least one member state to reopen other aspects of the Treaty. I repeat — deletion of the Protocol is not on: it would definitely require an Intergovernmental Conference and our partners definitely will not agree to an Intergovernmental Conference now on any aspect of the Maastricht Treaty. The Democratic Left should stop playing games, face up to the reality of the situation and have the grace to withdraw this totally unrealistic amendment.

On this aspect, it is wide of the mark for a second reason: deletion of the Protocol is not necessary to defend the rights of Irish women. The Protocol does not take away rights to travel and information under European law which, of course, is applicable in Ireland. All member states have, in the Solemn Declaration, confirmed that this is the proper legal interpretation which the Protocol will have when the Treaty to which it is annexed comes into force. Some commentators have queried the force of this. It can be taken as certain that all member states consulted their top legal advisers before agreeing the Declaration and while the member states are not the ultimate judicial arbiter, the Declaration must, in these circumstances, have tremendous force. In regard to the force of the Solemn Declaration I would point out that the recent second and favourable Opinion of the European Court of Justice on the legality of the EEA agreement pivoted, essentially, on, not a Solemn Declaration, but a mere entry in the minutes.

Thus, the Labour Party concern about the Protocol rendering Irish women second-class citizens, which appears to relate to the rights to travel and information available under European law, is also totally misplaced. These rights are available now and will continue to be available after ratification of the Maastricht Treaty even with the Protocol in its present form.

Mr. M. Higgins

Mr. Justice O'Higgin's does not agree with that.

Mr. T. Kitt

The remainder of the Democratic Left amendment is equally unrealistic. Deputy De Rossa, who was, until recently, a member of the European Parliament, knows perfectly well that there is no question of renegotiating the Treaty on the various points raised in the amendment. If he and his colleagues wish to underline how isolated they are from the mainstream of European thinking, including on the Left, that is, of course, their privilege.

The other amendments to the motion have been tabled by Deputies O'Keeffe and Mitchell. In essence, they propose that we should delay the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill pending the initiation or passage of legislation to amend the Constitution to provide for the rights to travel and information. We do not have any problem with the underlying intention of this amendment but we cannot agree to any delay with the present Bill.

As I have already indicated the Protocol even in its present form, does not take away rights to travel and information under European law. The doubts which have arisen on travel and information do not stem from the Maastricht Treaty but rather from the recent Supreme Court judgements. While recourse to the European Court of Justice very probably, even now, would vindicate the rights in any particular case, it is through action in Ireland in regard to our Constitution and public policy that the availability of these rights can be directly and generally guaranteed.

The issues arising from the judgements are highly complex, not least because of the difficulty of dealing with the Supreme Court judgements without adversely affecting the equal right to life of the mother. The Government will not be going down any road that does not uphold the equal right to life of the mother. The Government firmly believe that the logical course is to deal with all aspects together. As soon as the Cabinet Committee have completed their work and the Government have concluded their deliberations, the Dáil, the parties and the public will be fully informed of their conclusions. And as indicated in the White Paper, a Referendum will be held in November next, to deal with the travel and information issues which arise and with any other questions which, on completion of the Government's consideration of the issues raised by the Supreme Court decisions, emerge as necessary and feasible to deal with by constitutional amendment.

Now is not the time to deal with these complex issues. Our priority must be to deal with the real economic, social and political issues arising in the Maastricht Treaty. And this is what this debate is about.

Mr. M. Higgins

How did we come to have the Protocol in the first place?

Mr. Dukes

What might be the other issues?

Mr. T. Kitt

Turning to the importance of the cultural dimension within the European Community, there is, in the Maastricht Treaty, as mentioned by the Taoiseach yesterday, a specific article relating to culture. The adoption of Article 128 was a particular objective of the Taoiseach and the Irish Government. Ireland joined with the Commission in drafting the original proposal for the Article. We were active in all the negotiations leading to the final form of the Article. Until now the absence of a clear legal base for action by the European Community in relation to culture had inhibited the scope, quality and quantity of initiatives taken at Community level. I believe it is important to highlight this new competence and to focus public awareness on the great potential offered by this Article to the benefit of our cultural life.

Regular meetings in Council of EC Ministers for Culture have resulted in a number of important initiatives being introduced, including the now annual European City of Culture event which saw so many celebrations and events in Dublin during its year of nomination in 1991. Another initiative worthy of mention is the institution of the European literary and translation prizes.

But the lack of a legal basis enabled the less enthusiastic member states to query the role of the Community and to inhibit its development. The inclusion of the new Article will strengthen the hand of those, like Ireland; who support a more active supportive role by the Community.

It is not that we want the Community to take over responsibility for policy on culture entirely: absolutely not. The Article refers to the Community contributing to the flowering of the cultures — note the plural — of the member states, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore. Action by the Community is to aim at encouraging co-operation between member states and, if necessary, supporting and supplementing their action in a specified range of areas. Thus, there is no complete takeover or homogenisation: on the contrary, there is respect for plurality and diversity but also the potential to bring the resources of the Community to bear in support of cultural creation, something of particular importance for the less wealthy member states, where economic and social needs press heavily on public finances.

In an important paragraph, which Ireland, with some other member states, fought hard to keep in, the Article provides that:

The Community shall take cultural aspects into account in its action under other provisions of this Treaty.

This provides a legal basis for some national support and protection where otherwise the rigours of the internal market or other Community policies might threaten weaker cultures and languages. In a complementary step, an amendment to Article 92 (3) of the Treaty, dealing with State aids, adds to those that are permitted, aid to promote culture and heritage conservation where such aid does not affect trading conditions and competition in the Community to an extent that is contrary to the common interest. While this may appear to hedge the permission about with restrictive conditions, the amendment does afford scope and gives a firm legal basis for State aids in support of cultural activity.

The potential for developing Community action in cultural matters pursuant to the Maastricht Treaty will be among a number of items discussed at the next meeting in Council of Ministers of Culture which takes place on 18 May. The EC Commission has already been preparing guidelines for cultural action in the years 1992-96 as a basis for discussing an expanded cultural programme in the context of the new Treaty.

Our concern in the forthcoming discussions with our Community partners will be to ensure that increased resources are allocated to important areas in the cultural sector, such as training in conservation, arts administration and in audiovisual technology; the development of the schemes for translation, especially for lesser-used languages; support for our heritage conservation efforts; encouragement of more active interchange between our arts organisations and arts organisations throughout the Community, and, in particular, measures which would stimulate increased funding by the private sector.

It is important also for me, in my capacity as Minister of State for Women's Affairs, to take this opportunity to refer to the benefits which the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty will bring for Irish women in particular. I believe all sides in this House would agree that Ireland's accession to the European Community in 1973 brought enormous benefits to the Irish economy in general, but to Irish women in particular. This fact has been acknowledged throughout the years by a wide range of women's groups and by the representative body for all such groups, the Council for the Status of Women.

Ireland's entry to the EC in 1973 coincided with the very first great leap forward in the development of EC social policy — a social policy which, it should be recorded here, was inspired and spearheaded by Ireland's first Commissioner, iar-Uachtarán na hÉireann Dr. Patrick Hillery. It was as a result of this EC social policy that enlightened legislation such as the Anti-Discrimination (Pay) Act, 1974, and the Employment Equality Act, 1977, were passed by the Oireachtas. Subsequently, directives on equal treatment in occupational social security schemes and for those engaged in self-employed occupations were adopted. Moreover, community law has assisted us greatly in developing such concepts as equal pay for work of equal value, indirect discrimination, and positive action. It also shaped our thinking in realising that, having secured equality of opportunity in law by enactments of the Oireachtas, much remained to be done to secure equality of opportunity.

In order to achieve this important qualitative shift in the equality debate, the Community's two medium-term programmes on equal opportunities between women and men, covering the years 1982 to 1985 and 1986 to 1990, played a pivotal role in directing action by member states.

Moreover, these programmes focused attention on the need to shape policies to tackle structural problems such as the effect of new technologies on women's employment; women's unequal access to vocational training; the impact of the achievement of the Single Market on the services sector where female employment is predominant, and the growth of temporary and atypical work.

All these activities have served to increase the participation of women in the Irish labour force, and to provide them with national machinery — in our case, the Employment Equality Agency — whereby women can be assisted in seeking redress against alleged incidences of discrimination against them in the workplace. Since our accession to the Community, for example, the level of women's participation in training has increased every year, and the contributions to our national training programmes from the European Social Fund have been an important catalyst in this regard. This point is clearly illustrated by the fact that, in 1971, only 5 per cent of trainees in Ireland were women. By 1986, the participation rate of women had risen to 34 per cent. By 1990, women represented 41 per cent for all those completing training. These statistics indicated an increasing level of female participation in the labour force as well as the impact of positive action planning by our national training authority, FÁS.

In discussing the benefits which EC membership in general has brought for Irish women, I should also mention that Irish women have also benefited from a wide range of interventions sponsored by the European Commission in all member states designed to widen women's occupational choices and to facilitate their participation in the labour market. I speak of the Commission-sponsored networks and programmes dealing with vocational training for women; the diversification of vocational choices for women; local employment initiatives; child care; the more effective application of the legal equality provisions in the member states; positive action strategies; the elimination of sexism in our schools and the integration of an equal opportunity dimension into teacher training in the member states; the portrayal of the image of women in the media, and the position of the women of Europe in the decision-making process.

Ireland's membership of the EC has led to substantial advances in the position of Irish women in our society, advances which had failed to be made domestically despite the presence in the Constitution, since 1937, of the anti-discrimination Article 40.1. Adoption of the Maastricht Treaty will ensure for Irish women that these advances will never be clawed back, regardless of the economic circumstances at a particular time, but rather they can be built upon and greatly strengthened.

Adoption of the Treaty will enable Ireland to participate fully in the measures to be taken by the Community in the Third Medium-term Community Action Programme on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men 1991-1995. This will build upon the substantial advances achieved for the women of Europe in the previous two programmes. The overall objective will be to promote women's full participation in, and to revalue their contributions to economic and social life. The measures proposed have been articulated around three key issues: implementation and development of Community law; the integration of women into the labour market, and improving the status of women in society.

In assessing the benefits which adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in June will being for Irish women, I should mention that the Treaty's provisions will bring specific improvements in the Community's decision-making machinery to adopt new measures on equal treatment. The change, whereby such measures will be adopted, under the agreement among 11 member states on social policy, by qualified majority voting, will remove some of the stumbling blocks in the way of further progress on equality issues at Community level. Another new provision in that Agreement of Eleven permits affirmative action to make it easier for women to pursue a career or to prevent or compensate for disadvantages in their professional careers.

To nail another canard, the Protocol on Social Policy agreed by all 12 member states, makes clear that the Court of Justice and all the other institutions can be fully used to apply the Agreement on Social Policy among 11 member states. This is particularly important because the benefit of access by Community citizens to the Court of Justice is nowhere better exemplified than in regard to equality law pursuant to Article 119 of the Rome Treaty and to the general, steadily developing principle of non-discrimination, where the court's jurisprudence has conferred enormous benefits on women in regard to pay, working conditions, equality under social security and so on. From the decision that Article 119 was directly applicable, through the successive Defrenne cases and its rebuffs to indirect discrimination and on to some of the more recent cases relating to Ireland, the court has graphically underlined the benefits for women in Ireland and elsewhere of membership of the Community. Rejection of the Treaty and, with it, of the Proposal on Social Policy and the Agreement of the Eleven, would deny to Irish women the planned reinforcement of the Community's role in promoting gender equality.

For all the foregoing reasons I believe that a clear message should be sent to Irish women to the effect that the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in June will continue to bring sustained benefits for them. It will continue to improve their position in Irish society and will increase the important contribution which they can make to the economic and social well-being of our society — a contribution which, hitherto, too many Irish women have been excluded from making. In my capacity as Minister of State for Women's Affairs I have no hesitation in recommending the Maastricht package for full and enthusiastic endorsement by the women of Ireland.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I must advise the Minister of State that his time has practically disappeared.

Mr. Quinn

I suggest the Minister be given some parliamentary injury time.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

We have what may be an unwelcome precedent where in respect of Deputy Michael Higgins and Deputy Dukes we allowed an extra minute or two. I am sure the House will agree to give the Minister the same latitude but I ask him to confine his summary to a maximum of three minutes.

Mr. T. Kitt

I should now like to turn to the fourth element to which I referred at the outset, economic and monetary union and cohesion. Economic and monetary union and the Single Market will together give a powerful boost to growth and jobs in the Community. European Monetary Union will maximise the benefits of the Single Market through greater integration of European capital markets and the elimination of exchange rate uncertainty, leading to higher levels of investment. The Commission's study, One Market, One Money, suggested that combined with 1992, European Monetary Union could confer a longer-term gain on the Community of up to 15 per cent of its GDP.

This projected growth represents a major opportunity for Ireland. We have the second highest level of dependence in the Community on international trade for our livelihood, and the Community now takes over three-quarter of our exports. In other words, Ireland depends on trade for its prosperity and we depend very heavily on the Community for our trade. Any initiatives which make for growth in our biggest market can only be good news for Ireland, because they spell opportunity for our exporters. That is what the Single Market and European Monetary Union set out to do.

It has of course been suggested that Ireland will fail to qualify for European Monetary Union but that is simply not true. Indeed, the progress we have made in reducing Exchequer borrowing, setting the national debt-GNP ratio firmly on a downward path and containing inflation means that, as of today, we meet the basic requirements of Maastricht. This is not just an assertion on my part. The EC Council of Finance and Economic Ministers recently carried out an examination of Ireland's programme for economic convergence. They concluded by welcoming the fact that Ireland complied with the objective criteria for the move to the third stage of European Monetary Union. We intend that this should remain the position and, as we saw from 1987 to 1990, strong economic growth is quite possible in parallel with financial discipline, especially where the external climate is supportive, as we expect it to be with European Monetary Union.

I want to turn now to cohesion. There was always a risk with European Monetary Union that, on its own it could lead to a widening of disparities between member states, but it is worth underlining that we have narrowed the gap, moving from 59 per cent of the Community average in 1973 to 69 per cent now and it should not be overlooked that the Community average income itself grew very substantially over that period. Opponents of the Treaty cite the Governor of the Central Bank's statement in 1988 that, "Ireland did not join the European Community to become the Appalachia of Western Europe". Indeed they frequently distort what he said, to imply that in his view, participation in the Community is leading to such a result. They also refer to Professor Lester Thurow of MIT who said in 1989 that, "common markets do not ensure even economic development". I could not agree more with these sentiments, so long as they are not distorted.

It was precisely for these kind of reasons that the Government insisted that the Maastricht Treaty should contain strong commitments on economic and social cohesion, which would help ensure that the benefits of growth under European Monetary Union would be shared among member states. European Monetary Union and cohesion are two sides of the same coin. The one ensures growth, the other makes for balanced growth.

The Government's efforts to ensure against the risks inherent in European Monetary Union were highly successful. Time limitations prevent me from setting out fully the relevant provisions of the Treaty and the accompanying Protocol on Cohesion. They are, in any case, set out in the White Paper.

The European Community is above all a success story in a difficult international environment. That is why it has expanded over time to include new members and that is why so many other European countries, whether from the EFTA group or the former Eastern bloc, wish to join. It would be a tragedy if, at a time when the Community is once again on the move and when so many other European countries are poised to join, Ireland were to stand aside. We would then risk becoming the land that Europe forgot. That is not a prospect which I would welcome. Our future lies in Europe. With the Maastricht Treaty, the Community is equipping itself to meet the challenges ahead. We will face those challenges and we must face them together with our Community partners. That calls for a "Yes" vote on 18 June.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

We have now balanced the matter of excess time and Deputy Mitchell will understand if I apply the 20 minute rule in his case.

Mr. J. Mitchell

I appreciate that brevity is the soul of wit, although I am often amused that the quality of contributions in this House is sometimes measured in the newspapers by the number of words Deputies use. I wonder whether the newspapers are correct in adopting that approach.

I am glad of the opportunity to participate in this debate. I contribute as a Member representing the inner city of Dublin, Dublin Central. I am also glad to speak as spokesman for my party on environmental matters, which will be primary considerations in fashioning my approach to the referendum. However, important as they are, they are not the issues uppermost in my mind. The primary issue by which I will judge the Treaty is, first, the effect on the prospects for jobs here and the related question of the prospects of bringing to an end once and for all emigration as a feature of our economic and social history. I will also fashion my approach to this referendum on what I perceive as the vision of Europe. Finally, I have some very clear views to express on the question of defence.

I wish to refer to cohesion and the Cohesion Fund. Cohesion is the new buzzword of this step towards European Union. For some, cohesion is a code word for the begging bowl and this is one of the prime explanations for our unparalleled unemployment. Emigration has doubled in the past five years. Despite the influx of funds we have been told about by the Taoiseach, and others, in the past 20 years, we still experience this awful problem, not because of EC rules but because we have failed to make the necessary domestic changes to take advantage of the new position. As a result unemployment rates are two and a half times the European average, considerably higher than the next worst country in the Community, Spain. When we combine the unemployment and emigration figures the overall position in relation to people finding jobs at home is more than three times worse than the European average.

Yesterday I put questions to the Taoiseach on unemployment, including among those over 55 years, and on emigration in the past five years. I knew the figures but I wanted them put on the record. The Government have been avoiding these facts, as have the media and most of us. The first step in approaching a solution to a problem is to correctly identify the scale of the problem. Yesterday the Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach told me in this House that, including those over 55 years, the register of unemployment for the month of March of this year was 290,593, or 21.8 per cent of the workforce. As we know, the April figures are 6,700 higher, adding a further 0.6 per cent to the total. Therefore, the April figure represents a total of 22.3 per cent of the workforce on the register of unemployment, including those over 55 years. The Minister of State also told me that net emigration figures for the five years up to 1991 were 136,500 or 10.3 per cent of the workforce. If we add the two figures — 10.3 and 22.3 per cent — we get 32.6 per cent, which means that almost one-third of our workforce have failed to get a job at home in the past five years.

I could make a cheap point and say that this is solely the responsibility of Fianna Fáil who have been in power for those five years. However, the scale of the problem is such that it results not only from failure of the Fianna Fáil led Governments but failure of the system. It is not appreciated that the failure is on such scale that it is a potential earthquake. This underlying bombshell is akin to the feelings of the black population in America which were ignited by a recent court case decision. These unemployment and emigration figures will potentially give rise to a mammoth upheavel that nobody in the media and very few in politics seem to be aware of.

Anyone who represents an inner city Dublin community can see for himself the widescale unemployment — and the unemployment figures are as high as 70 or 80 per cent in parts of the city and I am sure this is replicated in other cities. People must be aware of the time bomb that is ticking away in urban areas. My wife is from a rural area in the west which is being rapidly depopulated because of migration and emigration. The unemployment statistics in rural areas are not as high as in the cities for the simple reason that the young people have left and gone abroad, causing enormous social deprivation. The social fabric of society is being refashioned in a most adverse way which is possibily permanent.

I cite these figures because it is very important for our people to know that many Members are concerned that the Treaty on European Union will be turned into a seminal event to change these grim statistics. People ask if the Maastricht Treaty will make any difference to unemployment. In my opinion the honest answer is no, as it will not change the situation in relation to jobs. All other EC countries have considerably lower levels of unemployment, some are a fraction of ours. I know that demographic factors play a part and can explain some of the difference but they do not explain the whole difference, yet Government and some social analysts, who are far from critical, almost excuse the appalling unemployment figures on the basis that demographic factors about which we can do nothing are at play and that unemployment is a problem about which we can do nothing. Fine Gael utterly reject that philosophy. There are other explanations for our grim unemployment figures. The reasons lie in the tax, social welfare, social insurance and means testing systems. It is virtually impossible to employ people honestly and legitimately in this country today because of what is known in shorthand terms as the "tax wedge". A married man with children would be better off on unemployment benefit or assistance than on the average industrial wage. That is not to say that those on unemployment payments are well off, because they are not, they are poor but they are trapped in poverty because of our tax and means testing systems. If they apply for a medical card or higher education grants, they are assessed on gross pay as if it were disposable income. After pay packet deductions, including tax, PRSI, pension and trade union contributions and sometimes a small VHI contribution and what I call post-day packet adjustments — for instance the variations in differential rents and the lack of a medical card — a person on the average industrial wage with more than two children would be better off on the dole, even though they would be very badly off on the dole. This is one of the classic poverty traps in this country. I have studied the system in Britain and this is not the way it works in Britain or in any other EC country.

Over the past five years since this Government came to power the poverty trap has got wider in every single budget. In his two budgets the "Maestro" Mac-Sharry widened the gap and the present Taoiseach widened the gap further in the two budgets he presented, and the present Minister for Finance in the recent budget widened the gap further again. This is why we have unemployment because the Government do not know the aggregate effect of their policies.

The Department of the Environment's policy on differential rent can end up affecting the labour market. People may ask how this is so. A working man is assessed for local authority rent on his gross pay and may pay rent of £25 per week although his net pay is only £140 per week. The man next door in similar family circumstances receives £140 a week on social welfare but pays only £3 a week rent. He is assessed on an income of £140 per week as I am assessed on £220. The same system applies when assessing means for medical cards, higher education grants, civil legal aid, etc. and once you are employed at all you cannot get supplementary welfare assistance. That is the poverty trap from the employee's point of view.

A married man on the average industrial wage of approximately £230 a week ends up with approximately £145 a week in his pocket no matter how many children he has because he does not get a tax allowance for his children. It costs the employer in excess of £300 to put that £145 into the working man's pocket, even though he is worse off than his unemployed neighbour next door — because over and above gross pay he pays on average 35 per cent more to cover public liability insurance, employer's PRSI contributions, etc. This is the accepted figure from both the Central Statistics Office and the Eurostat office in Brussels. Employers cannot afford to create jobs at this cost and employees cannot afford to take up jobs at this net wage. There is a big gap which is caused by Government policy. It is no use pretending that only this Government — although they have worsened the position — is responsible but successive Governments have brought about these problems by spending hundreds of millions, if not billions, of pounds.

We must honestly say that the Maastricht Treaty will make no difference to the unemployment problem. What will make a difference is a change in domestic policy, none of which is affected by the Maastricht Treaty. Some of the changes which are necessary could be very well facilitated from funds from the next step towards European Union. I urge the Government to use the Cohesion Fund from Europe to alleviate the poverty traps and allow simple decisions to be taken such as, first, that all means tests would be carried out on take home pay as and from 1 January 1993, the day of European Union. That is what has been done in the United Kingdom since 1984. That would remove a significant element of the poverty trap. A second point would be to give some recognition to children of those employed. Unless we do so we will continue with a significant distortion of the labour market and a significant disadvantage to those in employment. These are two areas in which we could use some of the Cohesion Fund to get the bugs out of our system. These are like road blocks, it is as if trees had fallen across roads thus preventing those roads being used. If those things could be got out of our domestic system the money from the Cohesion Fund could be used with exponential effect on our employment situation. We can all see that much work needs to be done in both the private and public sectors.

The second part of cohesion is this: if we depend on cohesion as a code word for a begging bowl we will fail. If we see the Cohesion Fund as a means of funding changes in our taxation system, social insurance systems and means testing system and as a means towards reducing dramatically the net cost of employing people while increasing significantly the take home pay of people on the average industrial wage, we will have done much to put right what is wrong in the labour market; we will have done much to sweep away those road blocks which are preventing job creation and which explain the reason why for every one per cent of economic growth as a country we have produced fewer jobs than any other country in the EC.

Acting Chairman (Mr. Wyse)

I would remind the Deputy he has three minutes remaining. I would ask Members to adhere to the Order of the House which is 20 minutes per speaker. We are trying to get in as many speakers as possible so I would appreciate the co-operation of everyone.

Mr. J. Mitchell

The second part of cohesion relates to ourselves. We should cease to think about the begging bowl and think instead about assisting enterprise rather than preventing it by bureaucratic rules and regulations by inducing in people a grant philosophy rather than an enterprise philosophy.

I should like to refer to the matter of defence. I have already mentioned in passing environment matters and they will be aided considerably by what is provided for in the Treaty. On the question of defence many people who are arguing against this Treaty are going overboard but they do have a point. Many of those who are promoting the Treaty are underestimating the defence dimension. There is a defence dimension and as far as I am concerned it is welcome. If there is to be a truly European Union, if this is the penultimate step — as I believe it is — towards a full and comprehensive union it only makes sense that we should be in a position to defend that union and that as a country we should be fully prepared to participate in that defence. To say otherwise is to mislead people. That is a positive element and we should not be afraid of it. We should see European union as playing a major peace-keeping role in the world in the future and that should be our philosophy. It must be remembered that the vision of Europe——

Acting Chairman

The Deputy must come to a conclusion.

Mr. J. Mitchell

—— was originally based on the idea of preventing the recurrence of war. The whole vision of Europe was to unite the countries of Europe so that there would never again be another world war, another Prussian war, another Crimean war, but to end wars for all time and bring about peace. It is in that context we should see and welcome the defence dimension of this Treaty.

Acting Chairman

Thank you for your co-operation Deputy.

Minister for the Marine (Dr. Woods)

I will be urging people to endorse the Treaty on European Union in the forthcoming referendum by voting in large numbers and by voting yes. The Treaty signed at Maastricht represents a critical watershed in the life of our nation. As a people we face a stark choice, to go forward with our partners in the development, in freedom and by consent, of an ever-closer European Union, or to detach ourselves from the historic path down which the 12 member states of the European Community have now decided to go. We want to stay in the first division in Europe. We do not want to face the prospect of relegation. We have played in the first division up to now. It has been tough at times. We have had to be fit; we will have to be fitter the next time to remain in the first division, but we intend to remain in the first division. We see no particular delight or joy in going to a second or lower division in Europe. The European Community provides great stability in a changing Europe.

I am a strong supporter of European Union for reasons of economic stability, for job prospects for our young people, for better access to markets for our produce and for social and economic development. We are living through a time of unprecedented change. It would have seemed incredible to most observers just a few years ago that by May 1992 the Soviet Union would be no more, that Germany would be reunited and that many of the countries of the former Eastern bloc would be seeking to transform themselves into new republics and to associate with the European Community. This is a very exciting, interesting and challenging time in Europe.

What does this mean for a member state like Ireland, physically at the edge of the Community, distanced from the tensions felt much more closely by some of our partners? To me it means that we must seek, as the Treaty itself seeks, to move closer together, to find in our union a new strength which we cannot hope for as individual states. The new European Community will grow faster and we want our people to contribute to and participate in that growth. We are good and we are enthusiastic Europeans and we want to go ahead with Europe.

We now seek the endorsement of the people. Now, of all times, is not the time for Ireland to choose a different route. Such a route would detach us from history itself and could leave us alone, isolated and without direction. The results of this would be incalculable. It would represent a leap into the unknown. We would inevitably pay a price, in terms of influence foregone and opportunities lost. It is true to say that Ireland, through its public representatives and its civil servants in Europe, has had a very considerable influence on the development of Europe in recent years.

Our peripheral location impedes our economic development in many respects. This is well recognised by the Community. We must not compromise our capacity to reap the substantial benefits which will derive from closer integration and eventual economic and monetary union. We cannot take that road when others, from Scandinavia and from Central and Eastern Europe, have set their sights on membership. In very simple terms, as we know, it has been estimated that the Single Market plus the monetary union can result in a growth in Europe of some 15 per cent. We want to participate in that growth and to have the opportunity to share in the wealth and the development which that will bring and in the jobs which can result from it.

The Treaty represents an enormous and a positive opportunity for Ireland. We have a contribution to make to the future of Europe. We must be confident. There is no room for self-doubt when facing this major challenge. We should now confidently proceed to the next stage of European integration. The Treaty will secure for the European Union its high standing in the world trading system. Our new Europe will be capable of playing on a level pitch with the other two giants of the developed world, Japan and the United States.

The benefits which, with effort and hard work, we can expect to gain from the integration process provided for in the Treaty are great indeed. Meeting the conditions for full participation in economic and monetary union will be tough and will involve rigorous financial discipline in the years ahead. There need be no doubts about our readiness for this undertaking. Our record since 1987 in correcting the imbalance in the public finances has few equals elsewhere. The benefits for our trade and industry will be there for all people as, ultimately, will be the reward in jobs.

The benefits will come from the stable framework within which economic policy will be conducted, stable prices, interest rates, exchange rates, confidence and the weight of the Community internationally. The EC's commitment to narrowing the gap in living standards between the regions of the Community — the concept known as cohesion — will also bring benefits particularly to Ireland.

These factors taken together with a hoped for up-turn in the world economy will serve as a forceful stimulant to economic development, to economic growth and to the increased welfare of the Irish people.

As Minister for the Marine, I am already involved in the business of the European Community and in securing the benefits of membership for the sectors of the economy for which I am responsible and the people whom I serve.

The Community to date has been about markets and access to those markets. The Single European Act has been a major stimulant to trade and this is as relevant to fish and fish products as it is to other sectors of the Irish economy. Economic and Monetary Union will further underpin the capacity for efficient trade in those products. The Community has also been committed to the development of its less well off and peripheral regions. This commitment has benefited Ireland significantly. The resource transfers have been dedicated to expanding and improving sectors like aquaculture, fishing and fish processing and ensuring a quality product through infrastructural improvements at fishery harbours and commercial harbours.

We are a maritime nation. It has been a major theme of my negotiations at EC level — and this will be the case in the development of new programmes and the expression of existing ones under the umbrella of the European Union — that the main resource is underdeveloped in Ireland. We will be looking to rapid and sustained infrastructural improvements in the years ahead and we will be seeking the broadening of the areas supported by EC funding.

To date the EC has helped us to develop our marine resources to benefit our coastal communities and provide a future for their children. We have received assistance with our programmes for: aquaculture development — over £15 million since 1980; fishing fleet construction and modernisation — over £15 million since 1980. During 1991 Irish fishermen received £1.3 million in aid for modernisation; fish processing plant construction and modernisation. Investment of up to £30 million will be supported over the period 1991-93. During 1991 aid of £3 million was awarded; fisheries and aquaculture research for example for exploratory fishing and new species. Over £1 million in the period 1988 to 1990; large-scale improvements to the marine research infrastructure of the State, for example the fitting out of the Lough Beltra Ireland's marine research vessel under the STRIDE programme, to which I will return shortly; fishery harbour construction and facilities improvements, for example, ice plants and auction halls, to improve fish handling and provide a better end product to the consumer. Investment over £20 million will be supported in the period to end 1993; harbours development and modernisation, more than £30 million received to date: in the last few years major works have been carried out; fishery training where 2,000 young people will receive training in the five years up to 1993; and fishery surveillance and management; aid of over £5 million was received during 1991.

It is my intention to build in the years ahead on progress to date with the commitment of the European Union to a policy of cohesion.

The largest sector for which I am responsible is of course the fishing industry. The EC Common Fisheries Policy is being reviewed at present. The cohesion principle enshrined in the Treaty is the main theme of my efforts to secure a better deal for the Irish fishing industry. As I have indicated, we have received Community assistance for vessel modernisation, for exploratory fishing, for a market management system for certain species, for monitoring and surveillance to protect stocks and waters, for processing and marketing initiatives, for training and for ports and facilities. This adds up to a major commitment by the Community to development in the sector. I know that this industry has the potential for further development but we can only achieve that development with the assistance of our European colleagues. It is in Europe's interest that all its regions share equally in the Community's wealth.

Ireland is an objective one region. On the fishing side, our waters contribute significantly to the EC's fishing stocks. This is an area where we contribute substantially to the Community. I have listened to Deputies on the other side of the House, particularly members of Fine Gael, talking about how we should not go to Europe with the begging bowl. We are not going to Europe with a begging bowl. We are going to Europe as full participants in the European Community where we make a contribution in every possible way. We have a right to avail of the opportunities and to demand that Irish people get a fair crack of the whip in the development of Europe.

Mr. M. Higgins

We gave them our fishing stocks anyway.

Dr. Woods

We have a right to expect assistance to develop our industry further and I will be insisting on that right. It is something the Community must recognise.

The Irish aquaculture industry has developed from negligible beginnings over the last decade. Production overall is now over 30,000 tonnes, worth an estimated £38-£40 million to the economy. There are now over 2,500 full-time and part-time jobs in the sector alone. It is interesting to note the numbers of people interested in going into that sector because they have in the coastal regions a tradition of fishing and of being involved with the sea. Most of this employment is located in remote coastal areas with few alternative sources of employment. There have also been indirect jobs created as a result of the development of that sector. Service industries such as feed production and equipment have also grown.

The continued development of the aquaculture sector is closely related to developments in the fish processing and marketing sector. The growing demand for raw materials by the fish processing sector will underpin growth in the aquaculture sector and will maximise high added value for aquaculture products.

Tomás Mac Giolla

What about the lice? There is an increase in lice as well.

Dr. Woods

Community assistance for the sector from 1980 to date has been around £15 million. Increased investment by the Community is essential to foster and maximise the potential growth in the aquaculture industry.

We have received more than £30 million to improve our harbour infrastructure. Efficient ports are vital to any trading nation but more especially to Ireland given our location and the exceptionally high proportion of our GNP which is traded. Our ports and the people who depend on them for jobs deserve the further opportunities possible under the Cohesion Fund. Some 80 per cent of our trade is shipped through our ports. Ireland's survival depends on rapid and cost effective access to European markets. The development of a sea-bridge to mainland Europe is a first requirement of cohesion and one of our priorities.

Research is a vital function which underpins many of my decisions as Minister. Research and technological development was first given a formal treaty basis in the Single European Act. We need access to the kind of support the Community's scientific programmes can give us. We have the scientists, we have the talent in our universities and higher level institutes. There is much scientific work to be done to back up our food industry and to exploit the potential of our sea resources. The Treaty will stimulate scientific and technical advances Community wide which the efforts of a single country like ours could never match.

Under the STRIDE Community Initiative — that stands for Science and Technology for Regional Innovation and Development in Europe — a funding package of £10 million from the Commission has been made available for the development of Irish natural resources up to 1993.

Ireland's Operational Programme under STRIDE which was approved by the Commission last year is a major boost for Irish science and technology. Projects in the four natural resource sectors of marine, environment, forestry and food will be assessed. There will be a large scale upgrading programme for science and technological facilities in these four sectors. This will stimulate development, strengthen our research and development capacity, provide essential research and technological support to our efforts, increase employment and secure existing jobs in the natural resource sector.

The marine component of the operational programme is the largest measure. It will enable us, at last, to create a coherent, well-equipped marine research and technological development base to underpin development in the marine area. The stimulus which STRIDE is providing for marine and other research and technology is an excellent example of the positive and tangible impact of a Community initiative.

Finally, I return to my earlier remarks. I urge a massive endorsement of the Treaty by this House and by the people. The Treaty is positive. It represents opportunity. It represents possibly the most fundamental evolutionary increment of human and political progress on the Continent for decades.

We are good Europeans, we have contributed fully and enthusiastically to the development of the European Community. We have benefited from our involvement, we are confident that we can meet the challenges and avail of the opportunities presented by this Treaty on European unity. I commend the Bill to the House.

Mr. Quinn

The Minister asserted that we are good Europeans. I should like to think that we would respect one of the great European traditions, the intellectual debate by Diaz, and the exploration through dialogue and discussion as to where those ideas might lead so that the future of all humanity can be better served.

What has been most unEuropean about the Maastricht debate, so far, has been the lack of such an exploration of ideas. The House should be reminded, for those who, in the course of history, will look at it in their deliberations, that this is only the third time in the course of the Maastricht process that this House has, so to speak, debated Maastricht and the two intergovernmental conferences which preceded it. We have been starved of one of the great European traditions, that of open and proper debate with a view to exploring ideas.

The Labour Party decided that that deficiency in the national debate should be addressed and we requested the international affairs committee of our party to prepare a White Paper, an analysis and a set of conclusions on the Maastricht process. The documents, which went through the administrative council of the Labour Party on 29 May, have now been published and I will be putting a copy in the Library of the House for the benefit of all Members. Within the limitations of the time available to me, I propose to read extracts from that document because it succinctly points out some of our views regarding the process of this debate and our current conclusions on Europe. The conclusions state:

Certain principles have remained at the core of the Labour Party's policy towards the integration of Europe. In particular these include the necessity of balanced and harmonious economic growth with full employment, regional development based on a real sense of solidarity, social equality and respect for civil rights, maximum democracy in decision making, the strengthening of common institutions in such a way that cultural diversity is respected, and the emergence of a shared commitment to peace, disarmament and the security of all the peoples of Europe.

The Maastricht Treaty is, in his own words, a new phase in the process of integration within Europe and is intended to create a European Union with common citizenship. Its provisions must be judged from a Labour standpoint against those principles which the party had advocated now for over two decades in respect of Ireland's membership of the European Community.

The conclusions are themselves the result of discussions which were conducted against a background of continuous monitoring of international events, particularly those relating to the European Community and its relations with other European states and international organisations.

The conclusions are necessarily a series of judgements on the further evolution of the European Community in which various arguments for and against Maastricht had to be balanced, before arriving at a recommendation as to the position the Party should adopt in the forthcoming referendum.

It has to be stressed that there are cogent arguments both ways. But in the end a judgement has to be made on where this country's best interests lie and also how the Labour Party's aspirations can be best advanced. The conclusion is that the Labour Party should support the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty.

It will be seen that these are not recommendations without any reservations. On the contrary, there are serious defects in the Treaty which need to be rectified in the medium term.

This document puts forward a number of proposals on which the Labour Party should campaign within Ireland, the EC itself and in the broader context of the wider Europe. This policy would be similar to the position of many other socialist and social democratic parties in the EC, for example that of the SPD in Germany, whose bureau decided on a similar approach last month.

The accompanying explanatory memorandum outlines the main provisions of the Treaty. It is a complex document because it deals with a wide number of policy areas, creates three parallel systems of integration, proposes various means as to how decisions are to be reached and impacts on sovereignty to a varying extent in the different policy areas covered by its provisions.

The key point to be emphasised from the explanatory memorandum is that the European Community is to be expanded into a larger entity called the European Union and that this is to be the first real attempt since the Coal and Steel Community was founded in 1954 to create a political union. The Maastricht Treaty does not of itself construct a federal Europe but rather provides the framework in which some form of federation could be built over the coming decades on the basis of further Intergovernmental Conferences.

The exact nature of that federation remains to be determined. It will require the unanimous assent of all the member states involved but the significance of Maastricht is that it shifts the focus of integration onto the political as well as the economic level. It is this development which makes it different in character from the SEA which was primarily concerned with the creation of a Single Market by 1992.

The document continues:

The Maastricht Treaty has been analysed with the following points in mind:

—European integration is a process which goes forward in stages

—the process has now reached the point where political union is to begin

—the Maastricht Treaty provides a framework for moving to further stages should the member states so wish

—the next stage may take place in 1996

—the goal of political union should be widely understood as the eventual objective of Maastricht

—the party's position in the referendum should be based on its attitude towards that goal

—the new European Union will be enlarged to include Austria, Sweden and Finland in 1995/96 and possibly also Norway and Switzerland

—a further enlargement is anticipated in 2000 with the inclusion of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary

—the party should furthermore base its decision on the future role of Ireland within Europe in the light of this enlargement by the end of the decade.

Under the heading, Closed Negotiations the document states:

It is necessary, however, to perface these conclusions by commenting on the manner in which the negotiations were conducted in the two Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs) leading to the Maastricht Treaty.

Initially there was to be only one such conference dealing with Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) since this was regarded as a natural corollary to the Single European Act (SEA) of 1987. The second conference arose out of the collapse of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe which led to the unexpected unification of Germany at a pace few could have forecasted.

In effect, German unification meant that the GDR was absorbed into the European Community without any changes in the existing Treaties. That development led to Chancellor Kohl and President Mitterand requesting the then Irish Presidency in April 1990 to put European Political Union on the agenda via a parallel Intergovernmental Conference. This was speedily agreed with the objective of containing a united Germany within a strengthened Community.

As a result, political union appeared on the EC agenda much earlier than anticipated and with little prior preparation on the part of any member state, even though the goal of a political union had been accepted from the outset of the intergration process in the early fifties.

The two Intergovernmental Conferences were conducted in the traditional manner of international diplomacy, notwithstanding the fact that they were devising a constitutional framework for a European Union. This meant that the negotiations were largely carried out in secret mainly by officials and periodically involving the key Ministers.

The final shape of the Treaty was determined by the Heads of State and Government at the European Council meeting in Maastricht last December. Many fundamental issues were only resolved at that point, such as the irreversible commitment to European Monetary Union, the wording of an ambition to create a federal Europe and the place of the Social Charter within the new union.

Some member states had published White Papers outlining their strategy towards the two Intergovernmental Conferences in the months leading up to Maastricht, in most cases with proper parliamentary debates and often with detailed examination in their respective parliamentary committees.

To some extent these activities offset the secrecy of the Intergovernmental Conference negotiations but it cannot be claimed that there was widespread democratic consultation on the aims of political union or the implications of European Monetary Union.

This criticism is particularly relevant in Ireland where there was no White Paper published in advance, no real debate in the Oireachtas and little if any examination in Committee. As a result the electorate was left singularly uninformed of the issues as they unfolded within the Intergovernmental Conferences and have now been presented within a complex package which must be accepted or rejected in total.

The nature of the Intergovernmental Conference negotiations means that there is no scope whatever for amending the articles of the Treaty after it had been voluntarily signed by the various Governments, despite some claims to the contrary. Any particular concerns of a Government are presumed by their partners to have been raised and satisfactorily dealt with during the Conferences. That is the way the Intergovernmental Conferences are intended to work and is normal practice in the negotiation of any international Treaty.

That being the case, democratic consultation prior to the opening of the Intergovernmental Conferences should have taken place and should have been maintained for their duration. This would have given the electorate an insight into what was being attempted, the strategy objectives of the Irish Government and the reasons why compromises were necessary at various stages.

A broad consensus could thus have been constructed or at least the electorate would have been better informed when called on to vote in a referendum.

Labour therefore makes its opening recommendation to the effect that, should there be any future Intergovernmental Conferences, the process should be carried out in an open fashion with the full involvement of the Oireachtas, preferably through a properly serviced European Affairs Committee.

The failure to establish such a committee twenty years after our entry into the EEC is lamentable and a serious indictment of our democratic process. Likewise the failure to spell out even broad national policy objectives relating to the EC, other than generating the maximum amount of Euromoney, is equally unacceptable. All parties must accept some element of blame.

Furthermore, Labour believes that Ireland should actively campaign for a procedure whereby any future treaties on integration should be democratically endorsed by way of referendum in each member state. In this way, Europe would be constructed by its citizens and not just by officials and those politicians who happen to be in office.

It should be remembered that we involve the people because we are forced to do so by our Constitution and not out of commitment to an open democracy. Denmark is the only member State to do so voluntarily. All member states should adopt this same democratic mechanism in ratifying any future Treaty on European integration.

There are eight conclusions in relation to eight key elements of the Treaty. The first relates to subsidiarity and our conclusion is as follows:

The very first article of the Treaty states that it marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizens. Subsidiarity, as expressed in the Treaty, should be supported as a guiding principle for creating the new Union.

Our call for a referendum falls into that category.

The second element of the Treaty refers to citizens' rights and our conclusion is that the Treaty is certainly worthy of support in terms of the rights of European citizens.

The third component refers to democracy and our conclusion is as follows:

As the SPD has noted, this question was left as unfinished business at Maastricht and could arise again in the context of the Delors II package, future enlargement or the next Intergovernmental Conference in 1996. In that regard, the Labour Party must devote considerable time and resources to developing its own views on these questions in preparation for any further stage in the integration process, preferably in common with its sister parties.

On the question of Economic and Monetary Union, which is complex and detailed, we have a short conclusion which is as follows

The movement towards a common currency and a European Central Bank is probably irreversible, barring events which cannot be forecast at this time. Ireland should benefit more from being a participant in European Monetary Union than from remaining outside. However, the conditions of entry to the final stage will have to be framed so that they do not add to our unemployment problem. The committee recommends that the party should actively campaign for the inclusion of full employment as an explicit Community objective and for the adoption of policies based on State and Community involvement.

The Government have not at any stage recognised that an unemployment problem might be caused by adherence to the five requirements of EMU membership. A major deficiency in the Treaty is the failure to include full employment as a Community objective.

On the question of cohesion our conclusion is as follows:

Two judgements are called for here in arriving at a conclusion. The first is political. The question is whether the European Council will agree to the Commission proposal. Despite current difficulties, especially in Germany, the answer would be yes on the basis of past experience and the existence of a Protocol on cohesion. There are those who will disagree and argue it will be much reduced.

The jury is still out on that question. Forced to give a personal view, I would have to say that Delors would be very lucky to get the full amount.

The second question on the conclusions in relation to cohesion is as follows:

The second question is whether the amounts are sufficient, if they are agreed. The answer is likely to be that they would never be enough given the scale of our combined unemployment and debt problems but undoubtedly would be a valuable contribution to our national investment programme. For that pragmatic reason, the Commission proposals for the Cohesion Fund, but nothing less, should be accepted.

In that regard, the Commission proposals for the total budget are 1.37 per cent of GNP.

Social policy is the sixth element on which the document reaches a conclusion. The document reads:

The Social Charter agreement may give rise to complexity and confusion in legal terms and it is essential that it is reflected in early and determined initiatives on the part of the Council. However, the Social Action Programme, implementing the Social Charter, can now be adopted and applied in full since the delays and obstructions occasioned by the UK attitudes can be ignored by other Member States. In the optimistic belief that this will now happen — and bearing in mind the statement of the Executive Committee of ETUC that the trade union movement should support the ratification of the Treaty — the Social Agreement should be supported.

Unfortunately for the present Minister for Labour and previous Ministers for Labour, they will now have nobody — meaning the British delegation — to hide behind in respect of this matter and Ireland's conservative opposition not to the rhetoric of the Social Chater but to the provisions of the social action programme, ably articulated across the street in Kildare House, will now be flushed out into the open.

There are two other conclusions that I do not have time to read into the record. One concerns the question of development co-operation and the other concerns the issue of common foreign and security policy.

On balance, we in this House have to learn from this process. We have not learnt well enough. The Government of which I was a member badly handled the process of negotiation for the Single European Act. I am on record as having said that before, and in July 1991 and November 1991 I urged that today's Government learn from the mistakes that we made, unwittingly or perhaps somewhat arrogantly, at that time. It is tragic to relate that neither the permanent establishment of the Civil Service nor the change of Government since then have adequately learnt the lessons. We are now in a democratic republic in which the Government and the major Opposition parties are calling on the people to vote "yes" to a referendum because of its historic and momentous changes, the biggest changes to the constitutional status of this State since 1972, or perhaps since 1922. We, as a body politic, have probably taught the people more about abortion and gynaecological practice in every other state in the world than we have taught them about the intricacies, the question marks and the doubts that the Maastricht Treaty presents to the Irish people at this time. I say that more in sadness than in anger because the total absence of journalists from the Press Gallery and the lack of political concern in the House seem to reflect that despite the fact that the House is having a substantial debate on the matter — and I do accept that this is a substantial debate — the kind of political attention that we would like it to have is being denied us.

I urge that the Government look for, if they want it, the kind of constructive consensus that is on offer from the Labour Party and is, I believe, on offer from the other two Opposition parties in relation to clarifying the legitimate doubts of women and men in all sectors of our society on the question of the Protocol and its implications. It is unacceptable that on 18 June the people should vote on the ratification of the Treaty without knowing the precise implications of what the Protocol may mean for the right to information and to travel, or what the Government's intentions are.

I can only say — and I invite the Tánaiste to refute this, as he has the opportunity — that the reason the Fianna Fáil Party are refusing to publish their commitment to the right to information and the right to travel is that that party cannot find unanimous substantial agreement on that question. That is the only explanation for the silence in this issue. On that point, I conclude by inviting the Tánaiste to refute that political charge before he reads out his departmental speech so as to eliminate what seems to me to be a reasonable political explanation for an indefensible position.

The Tánaiste

In the first place I reject the statement made by Deputy Quinn that publication of proposals to deal with the matters to which he referred has not occured because unanimity cannot be reached within the Fianna Fáil Party. The Taoiseach has outlined to the House what our programme is in that regard and he has indicated that as soon as we have the people's approval for the Treaty on European Union we will deal with those other matters, which, by definition and by comment from all European politicians, are domestic matters.

Labhraím i bhfábhar an Bhille um an Aonú Leasú Déag ar an mBunreacht 1992. The ratification of the Treaty on European Union is the most important issue to be placed before the electorate for a generation. The choice is simple — whether to progress with our partners in the European Community or to go it alone in a state of limbo at the margin of European affairs. I am certain that on 18 June the electorate will vote decisively to move ahead as a full partner in a new European union. Here in this House, throughout my constituency and in the area of competence of my Departments, I strongly urge the electorate to do so.

I endorse the remarks made by Deputy Quinn that there is an obligation on all, and particularly on the news media, to ensure that the issues are fully explained and debated. As with Deputy Quinn, I find it rather sad that the news media are absent from the Press Gallery, especially considering that they assume a high moral tone of criticism of Members of this House and point out whether or not Members are present for major debates. I know that the news media have facilities available in other rooms to listen to the debate but their presence at the debate would indicate their interest in this very important matter.

Since its foundation, the European Community has been constantly evolving towards the goal of political and economic union. The Treaty on European Union is the most important milestone so far along that path. The union is, not merely in degree but in kind, completely different from what we have already voted on. The Treaty was arrived at after protracted negotiations during which our Community partners responded generously to our concerns over a wide range of economic issues. As a result, the development of less prosperous members of the Community has been embraced as a central objective in the blueprint for economic and monetary union agreed at Maastricht. Therefore, the referendum presents us with an unprecedented opportunity for long term growth and development.

In deciding how to vote in the forthcoming referendum, people should consider the extra employment which will be created in Ireland as a result of the economic union agreed at Maastricht. This is a very important matter for all sides in the House. A vote for the Treaty is a vote for job creation. It is estimated that the combined impact of the completion of the Single Market and the Structural Funds could add 7 per cent to 8 per cent to our national income in the next eight years. Economic integration produces economic expansion. A vote for the Treaty is therefore a vote for growth.

Substantial Community funds, allegedly in the region of £6 billion, are expected to be made available to Ireland. In that regard, I should like to say that if that did not exist at all I would still find it easy to urge the people to vote for this Treaty and this union. I am not saying that there is any danger of the £6 billion not being available; I am sure that it is a reasonable assessment of what will become available despite the economic problems in Germany and elsewhere in the Community. Even if it was not available I am fully convinced that it would be the sacred duty of everybody in this House and in political life here to urge a "yes" vote for this Treaty. Even if we were only getting the transfers that we have been getting since 1973 it would still be well worthwhile producing a "yes" vote. Furthermore as part of the largest economic bloc in the world, our attractiveness as a location for foreign investors will be greatly enhanced. A vote for the Treaty is therefore a vote for investment.

The European Community and the Common Agricultural Policy are of vital concern to the farming community. No matter what anybody says, the transfers under the Common Agricultural Policy have revolutionised the living conditions of small farmers particularly. I could go on for a long time on that point because neither the social nor the economic impact of membership of the European Community on the position of small farmers has been fully realised. The farm prices which prevail in the Community are far more favourable than those obtaining in world markets. We all know that. We must ask ourselves if we wish to be at the conference table as full members when agricultural policy is being addressed. The answer is, "of course we do". A vote for the Treaty is a vote to retain an effective voice on agriculture at EC level not only for our farmers but also for those in the north-eastern part of the country many of whom have indicated to me that they are glad that we are at the table with the policies we have. These are the relevant facts which people should weigh in their minds on June 18.

Is í an Ghaeilge croí-lár ár n-oidhreachta agus, ar ndóigh, is cuid thábhachtach í d'oidhreacht na hEorpa freisin. Is í an Ghaeltacht tobar na Gaeilge agus tá sé mar pholasaí againn ní amháin an tobar sin a chaomhnú ach é a fheabhsú freisin. Tá cabhair nach beag faighte againn thar na blianta agus go háirithe ó 1989 i leith chun an Ghaeltacht a fhorbairt agus táim cinnte de go méadófar go mór ar an gcabhair sin tar éis dúinn glacadh leis an gConradh seo.

Tá cóip as Gaeilge den Chonradh agam anseo agus beidh cóip den choimriú den Pháipéar Bán againn agus beidh sé sin á scaipeadh sna Gaeltachtaí.

Faoin gClár d'Fhorbairt Tionscail 1989-1993 tá breis agus £18 milliún (i.e. 75 faoin gcéad de thimpeall £24 mhilliún) le fáil ag an Stát ón gCiste Réigiúnach de chuid an Chomphobail Eorpaigh le haghaidh fo-chláir speisialta do na limistéir Ghaeltachta arna cur i gcrích ag Údarás na Gaeltachta. Chomh maith leis sin, meastar go mbeidh caiteachas de bhreis ar £15 mhilliún ag an Údarás ar fhoirgnimh thionsclaíocha sa Ghaeltacht agus beidh cúnamh ón gComhphobal ar fáil freisin i leith an chaiteachais sin.

Tríd an gcabhair seo, tháining meadú comhlán de bheagnach 3,000 post sna comhlachtaí a thug an tÚdarás cabhair dóibh ó thús 1989 go dtí deireadh 1991. Ar ndóigh, bhí poist eile á cailleadh ach, in ainneoin sin, tháinig méadú 10 faoin gcéad ar an bhfostaíocht sa Ghaeltacht sa tréimhse 1989 go 1991.

Tá foráil sonrach sa Chonradh faoina ndéanfaidh an Comhphobal a chuid gníomhaíochtaí a fhorbairt agus a shaothrú ar mhaithe lena chomhtháthú eacnamaíoch agus sóisialta a neartú. Féachfaidh an Comhphobal go háirithe leis an neamhionannas idir leibhéil fhorbartha na réigiún eagsúil, ar a n-áirítear na limistéir thuithe, a laghdu. Faoin gConradh leagtar síos céimeanna praiticiúla chun an cuspóir seo a bhaint amach: Ciste Nua Comhtháthúcháin; méadú mór ar an gcúnamh atá ar fáil faoi na Cistí Struchtúrtha; agus, mar atá luaite ag an Teachta Quinn, "Pacáiste Delors" faoin a mbeidh méadú an-suntasach sa chúnamh do cheithre thír ar a n-áirítear an tír seo, an Phortaingéil, an Ghréig agus an Spáinn.

Is cinnte go gcaithfear an Ghaeltacht a áireamh mar cheann de na réigiúin is lú forbartha agus beidh mise, mar Aire na Gaeltachta, ag déanamh gach dícheall chun a chinntiú go gcuirfear go mór le forbairt tionscail, forbairt shóisialta agus eacnamaíochta na Gaeltachta.

It must be accepted that there is a very considerable momentum behind the drive towards European Union. It is, therefore, naive in the extreme to presume that 340 million Europeans will quietly drop the Treaty and all its benefits if Ireland choose to opt out. It has been stated that if we fail to ratify the Treaty, then it will automatically fall in all of the other member states. In the short term, this is true but only in a strict legal sense. It is of no real significance in the longer term. There is every likelihood that a new Treaty, this was mentioned by the Danish Foreign Ministry on the lines of Maastricht, would be ratified by the other eleven members and that Ireland would be left out in the cold. Those who emphasise the fact that we have a legal veto over the actual Treaty document as written are emphasising an irrelevance. The structure of the agreement could be incorporated very rapidly into a new treaty, excluding Ireland. There is a very real danger of being excluded should the Treaty be rejected.

The Treaty is not an à la carte menu from which we can pick and choose. Regardless of what people might wish there is no scope whatever for renegotiation at this stage. The choice before us now is to accept or reject the Treaty as it stands. The implications of this choice are much too serious to allow debate to be sidetracked into areas which are either peripheral or wholly and entirely irrelevent. Ireland's most vital national interests are at stake.

Unfortunately, all over the country, various groups have been dusting down their hobby horses for a Quixotic charge against the Treaty. Apologies to Don Quixote de la Mancha. Furthermore, these groups accuse the Government of scaremongering for simply placing the plain facts before the people. We reject that charge. It is the simple truth that rejection of the Treaty would have a catastrophic impact on our economic development for years to come. The opponents of the Treaty seem to feel that the Government should understate the benefits of the Treaty and play down the disastrous consequences of the rejection so that the nonsense being presented in favour of a "no" vote will look less dangerous.

The Government have an obligation to place the facts before the people. We are under no obligation to dilute the truth in order to make our opponents case look less absurd. If a balanced presentation of the facts is causing offence in some quarters, so be it.

Should the referendum fail, the consequences for Ireland — consequences which cannot be wished away — will be immediate and greatly damaging. All that we have achieved over nearly 20 years in encouraging a consensus among our partners to pursue the objective of economic cohesion and the development of less prosperous regions would collapse like a house of cards. I have two large factories in my own constituency which sell everything into the Community. We have a disadvantage with transport, but that added to the disadvantage of non membership of the Community would be disastrous for those factories.

The developments regarding a Common Foreign and Security Policy and the issue of defence seem to have stimulated the paranoid tendencies of some individuals. In fact, Ireland's position is fully acknowledged by the Treaty. The facts are as follows.

The provisions in the Treaty dealing with foreign and security policy are designed to strengthen the ability of EC countries to work together on international issues. The range of issues that can be dealt with is broadened and the idea of joint political and diplomatic action is developed. However, defence issues are specifically excluded from the area of joint action and may be referred to the Western European Union only with the unanimous agreement of the member states.

The Treaty does not set up a common defence policy. It contains no mutual defence commitments whatever. Conscription cannot be imposed on Ireland through the Treaty and it is pure nonsense to suggest that it can. We had headlines on that too. Headlines are easy if one looks for them. This is where scare-mongering really arises. Ireland's traditional position of remaining outside military alliances is recognised by a specific provision in the Treaty which states that the policy of the European Union in the security area "shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain member states".

For the benefit of the House I will read into the record Article J.4.4 of the Treaty on European Union, the first part of which refers to Ireland:

The policy of the Union in accordance with this Article shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States—

Some people out of ignorance, careless reading or deliberately, added that this referred only to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation whereas the second part of Article J.4.4 begins with the word "and" and reads as follows:

and shall respect the obligations of certain Member States under the North Atlantic Treaty and be compatible with the common security and defence policy established within that framework.

Article N.2 reads:

A conference of representatives of the governments of the Member States shall be convened in 1996 to examine those provisions of this Treaty for which revision is provided, in accordance with the objectives set out in Article A and B.

The Treaty provides that an Intergovernmental Conference in 1996, referred to in the Article I have just read, may consider the framing of a common defence policy. Once again any agreements in this area must be unanimous. The Maastricht Treaty contains very strong safeguards for Ireland's position. Specifically, by ratifying the Treaty, we do not close off our options in any future negotiations.

Regarding future developments in this area it is significant that Sweden, Finland and Austria, all neutral countries, are seeking to join the Community. Switzerland is considering making application. I know that Hungary is very anxious to come into the Community as are Czechoslovakia and Poland, who are hoping to gear themselves for entry. Therefore, we can have every confidence that, when issues under the heading of foreign and security policy come to be considered in future, our position will be well understood. Indeed it is likely that several new members with similar views will be parties to any discussions. Any new agreement in this area after 1996 would be preceded by a referendum. Accordingly, any attempt to place this issue on the centre stage of the debate on the Treaty is completely misleading.

In economic terms, Ireland's general experience as an EC member has been extremely positive notwithstanding the utterances emanating from certain gimcrack economists who seek to demonstrate otherwise. Since joining the Community our trade and exports have expanded and diversified. Large sums of money have been invested in Ireland by the Community. Furthermore, our attractiveness as a location for international investors has been greatly enhanced. As a trading nation, exporting most of our output and importing a great deal of what we consume, we have a lot to gain from economic integration. This Treaty opens up a range of new opportunities. The move towards monetary union is but one example of a measure which will be of practical help to Irish business by eliminating the costs and administration associated with foreign exchange transactions. I remember well when Deputy Dukes was Minister for Finance that he and I agreed across the floor of the House that the day when the ECU would be the Community monetary unit would be a good one for the economies of the European Community.

It is fair to say that our economic performance in the early and mid-eighties was disappointing. It was not the fault of the European Community that the then Irish Government chose to double the national debt in four years. We have serious problems at present in terms of emigration and unemployment. It is patently absurd to contend that we could better face these problems by rejecting the opportunities of Community membership and adopting a position of Albanian-style economic isolation; if one pursues an Albanian economic policy, one gets an Albanian result.

However, I should like to call for positive support for the Maastricht Treaty as a positive step forward which will bring real benefits to this country and to the Community as a whole. People should not support the Treaty solely because there is no alternative. Furthermore, the benefits of the Community are not confined in any way to the economic sphere. I have not time to go into the detail but it is an important aspect which should be discussed and debated. As a people we have grown as a result of our partnership with Europe. For many years Ireland remained an isolated country, away from the mainstream of world affairs. Through our membership of the European Community we have gone out in the world and found our place in it. We have gained in stature and self-esteem. We have found the courage and confidence to stand as equals with other countries. Our sense of identity and national pride have been enhanced. By becoming aware of other countries we have also become more aware also of what is unique about ourselves. Dá Eorpaí sin is ea is Gaelaí sin. By becoming involved in joint decision-making we have an enhanced sense of national sovereignty, indeed, an extension of sovereignty when we take decisions affecting the Acropolis in Athens as well as the Rock of Cashel.

We have now a younger generation who see themselves as a part of a multinational European Community. I am certain that they, in particular, will embrace the Treaty and the principles on which it is founded as a reflection of their beliefs and values.

I have complete confidence in the commonsense of the Irish electorate. I am certain that on June 18 there will be an overwhelming endorsement of the Treaty on European Union, agus molaim sin dóibh.

Mr. Gilmore

The debate on the Maastricht Treaty has got off to a bad start. That bad start did not commence when Senator Hanafin raised the Supreme Court decision at a meeting of the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party. The bad start goes back to the commencement of the negotiations leading up to the Maastricht Treaty, to the manner in which the Intergovernmental Conferences were conducted in virtual secrecy, to the beginning of a process which kept the public in the dark until the very last minute.

The people ask what is Maastricht because they simply do not know. The people should have known what Maastricht is about but the whole approach to the conduct of European affairs in this country is confined to a Euro-élite, speaking a Euro language, which has the effect of keeping the public in the dark. We have had only the most restrictive form of debate on European affairs in this House. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Secondary Legislation of the European Communities, its terms of reference and upgrading are long overdue and still have not taken place. Indeed, in the Government proposals to the Committee on Procedure and Privileges that committee is to be merged in a larger foreign affairs committee. I welcome the establishment of a foreign affairs committee. But, with the deepening of the European process, I would have expected that at the very least we would have had a special committee of the Houses of the Oireachtas dealing with European affairs.

The Government did not publish any policy position in the lead-up to the Intergovernmental Conferences. Therefore, we never knew what was the policy of this country going into those negotiations. The Intergovernmental Conferences themselves were conducted with little or no accountability to this House.

The Treaty was presented to us in December as a fait accompli and contained the infamous Protocol 17 which had never been sought publicly, debated publicly or, prior to the recent controversy, never explained publicly. The White Paper was not published until a couple of months ago. Now we have circumstances prevailing in which the Government and many supporters of this Treaty attempt to shove it through the referendum, without critical examination, attempting to mobilise blind, national consensus that the Treaty is de facto a good thing because our betters say it is and therefore our citizens should not ask too many questions about the small print.

It is being suggested to us that if we vote "no" we will in some way be squeezed out of Europe or left behind, that if women vote "no" there could be a renewal of third party injunctions in relation to their right to travel and that, if we vote "no" we would be faced with a catastrophic economic outlook.

In his contribution here yesterday the Taoiseach added a further unfortunate twist to all of this when he substituted crude political attack for reasoned argument. He suggested in a hustings-style speech that those who opposed the Treaty were no more than a marginalised array of malcontents. The Tánaiste added his contribution to that today when he suggested that any economist who questions the prevailing economic consensus about Maastricht is a gimcrack economist.

This is no way for the Taoiseach or Tánaiste of this country to open the Maastricht debate. Surely the Prime Minister of this country can make a better and more reasoned case for the Maastricht Treaty than to rely on clumsy threats and blunt political attack. I have just been appointed campaign director for my party for this referendum. I appeal to the Taoiseach to conduct this referendum campaign on the basis of reasoned argument and informed comment. The more he and other people who support the Treaty resort to political attack on opponents of the Treaty, the more they rely on dire warnings, the more they undermine the case for Maastricht. They should stick to the content of the Treaty rather than to their antipathy to some of the opponents of it.

Yesterday the Taoiseach, albeit grudgingly, acknowledged that those of us who are opposing the Treaty are doing a service to democracy by presenting the downside of the Treaty, highlighting its deficiencies and forcing a real debate on the central contents of the Treaty. He concluded by inviting "all parties to give a clear signal that Ireland is determined to remain in the centre of future European development". I wish to respond by stating clearly that my party, the Democratic Left, have no hesitation in giving such a clear signal. We are committed to the idea of European Union. We have a vision of a Europe which is democratic, where decision-making is accessible and decision-makers accountable to the citizens of Europe; a Europe of common citizens where Bosnian or Basque, Ulster or Ukranian, Irish or Italian; a Europe which is fair to all its citizens and which ensures that the economic benefits of European union are as effective in Mayo as they are in Munich. We want a Europe whose foreign and security policy is based on the principles of peace rather than on the muscle of a new power. As Deputy De Rossa said yesterday, our decision to call for a no vote in this referendum was not taken lightly but only after a detailed study of the Treaty which exposed to us serious deficiencies in it and which are acknowledged by many of the supporters of the Treaty. If we are to be consistent and regard these deficiencies as serious then the only logical thing to do is to ask the people to vote against the Treaty.

Much has been made so far in the Treaty debate about two issues — the implications for Irish neutrality of the common foreign and security policy and the intended defence policy in 1996 and the diminished rights for Irish women in the new Europe. These issues are certainly central to our opposition to the Treaty. The Treaty rightly provides for common European citizenship but I cannot vote for a Treaty which relegates Irish women to citizenship rights which are less than those enjoyed by Irish men and less than those enjoyed by women and men in the rest of Europe. In his contribution earlier, Deputy Lenihan warned that if we reject this Treaty the European train will carry on and we will be left standing on the platform. My worry is that if we accept this Treaty Irish women will not even get past the ticket collector.

The main argument for the Treaty rests on the warning of dire economic consequences if we reject it. I wish to challenge the assumptions in relation to the economic benefits of this Treaty. First, I should like to deal with the question of the Structural Funds. On Monday last the Irish Press ran the following prominent headline, “Ireland may not get its £6 billion Euro Windfall”. The story cited objections by the British Government to the substantial increase in Community funding which is promised following the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty. It would now appear almost certain that a final decision on the amount of money to be provided to peripheral regions of the EC such as Ireland will not be known or agreed until after the referendum on 18 June. It is likely to occur during the term of the British Presidency of the Council, and they have already signalled their lack of sympathy for the type of increase the Government are seeking.

The receipt of extra Community funds is being cited by the Government as one of the main reasons there must be a yes vote. We are also being told by the Government that anything other than a yes vote will place these funds in extreme jeopardy, lead to Ireland being pushed into the second lane and result in our EC partners forging ahead without us. There is something clearly wrong here. Nowhere in the Treaty is the amount of money to be made available to peripheral regions spelled out precisely. If the Government could not obtain cast iron guarantees on funding when the Treaty was being negotiated, how do they hope to obtain the type of funding required after the Treaty has been voted on?

If the promised £6 billion is not obtained this country faces even more serious problems than might have been expected following European Union. Already the Minister for Foreign Affairs seems to be conceding the loss of some moneys. He is quoted as stating that the figure will be close to £6 billion, whatever assurances that is supposed to offer us. If we compare the likely amount on offer with the failure of the moneys under the existing Structural Funds to tackle the problems of unemployment and lower living standards here than the Community average, than any reduction in the promised amount will mean that the Irish economy will, in real terms, receive no more cash inflows over the next five years than it has over the past five years.

We will suffer in new ways. Because of the process of the Single Market we will suffer an increasing loss in revenue from VAT and excise duties. The completion of the Single Market will place additional strains on what remains of Irish manufacturing industry. In short, the Irish economy will become part of a huge 350 million member open market without any realistic compensation for the fact that Ireland is a peripheral region in that market.

Even beyond the budget allocation to Ireland under European Union the question of how that money is spent is perhaps even more important. The crisis facing Irish farming, the high levels, of poverty of huge numbers of Irish farms and the failure of the Irish food processing sector to establish any meaningful new niche in the European market all testify to the failure of the Common Agricultural Policy and other funding measures to assist this vital sector of the Irish economy. The persistent rise in unemployment and the continuation of Irish living standards at below 70 per cent of the EC average shows that the current Structural Funds are similarly failing to assist the citizens of this country, whatever number of road by-passes are built or whatever small number of people are reaping the benefits of £3 billion in these funds.

What is the Government's plan to ensure that whatever amount of money we receive under the new Treaty will produce jobs and better living standards in Ireland? The European Community's forecasters predict that unemployment is going to rise in the year ahead. Indeed the underlying assumption in the Delors II package of 2.5 per cent growth per year means that the Community's post-Maastricht five year draft economic programme does not plan to reduce unemployment below existing levels. How does the Taoiseach reconcile these forecasts with the argument that the Maastricht Treaty in its existing form is vital to economic development? Is he simply dusting off the promises made during the referendum on the Single European Act of 1987 when the establishment consensus told us that the Single European Act with its increased Structural Funds offered a short cut to growth, expansion and prosperity. The only difference now seems to be that today's promises are on an even grander scale, the threats if we vote no are even greater and the likely disappointment when the promises fail to materialise are even more shattering for the Irish economy, jobs and society.

This points to the vital necessity of creating a Community industrial policy which will divert funding for job creation and industrial development to the regions of the Community. Unless there is a positive discrimination in favour of Ireland and other disadvantaged periperhal areas then the Single Market will serve to increase disparities and not solve them. I am aware also that many regional and community groups are increasingly concerned at the way EC moneys are being spent. There is now an emerging demand from a number of such groups that Ireland be broken up into further regions and that these regions be allowed direct access to EC moneys. People in different parts of the country, be it Dublin, the west, the midlands or wherever, no longer trust the Government's handling of EC moneys.

The Taoiseach will no doubt recall that when the initial submissions for the Structural Funds were being drawn up much play was made of the new regions within the country announced by the Government. These regions and the consultation process which was also launched turned out to be little short of pure fiction. It appears that the Government would like to treat the Structural Funds as a kind of super lottery, where people and local communities have no say or input into how the moneys are spent. This must be remedied if whatever new funds obtained are to be used to seriously tackle the economic and unemployment crisis facing this country.

Second, I would like to raise the assumption contained in the White Paper and repeated here yesterday concerning economic and monetary union. The White Paper states that economic and monetary union will lead to these policies having a more beneficial effect on growth and employment than the sum of the policies of individual member states in isolation. I do not doubt that that is the case, but the real question is how is that increased overall wealth and prosperity in the Community as a whole to be distributed, particularly to the poorer areas of the Community?

Interestingly enough that difficulty is acknowledged in the White Paper which states that there is the possibility that in European Monetary Union the more prosperous regions of the Community could benefit disproportionately from the fruits of integration. There is also, of course, the danger that these regions might gain even further benefits at the expense of less developed regions. It goes on to state that all of this can be redressed by the provisions in Chapter 5 and it refers to the provisions for economic and social cohesion. It seems that these provisions, first, are largely aspirational and, second, in so far as they have any real meaning are dependent on the Structural Funds, about which I have spoken, and the Cohesion Funds which will be confined to environmental and transport issues.

The real question that arises here is why some permanent mechanism is not built into the Treaty to provide for the peripheral regions and to ensure that economic cohesion is achieved. Why, for example, in the area of industrial policy — we are now setting up an Oireachtas committee on unemployment — are the only references to industrial policy confined to competition? Arguably, what the Treaty provides for is not an industrial policy but a competition policy. The citizens are entitled to wonder why, for example, in the area of fishing there is a requirement that an Irish fisherman must comply with certain quotas, can only catch certain species and operate within certain limits and why, for example, Irish farmers have to operate within certain limits and comply with certain quotas for milk, and so on, while these same rules do not apply in the area of investment. In the case of economic and monetary union, which it is believed will lead to increased prosperity overall in the Community, there is no provision for the dispersal of that in the form of employment creation and investment in the——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I would remind the Deputy that he has only one minute left.

Mr. Gilmore

In the one minute that I have left I want to raise the issue of the budgetary targets that have to be met in order to qualify this country for entry into the third stage of the process. The Taoiseach yesterday dealt with this matter in a very glib manner. The best he could do was suggest that if we do not vote "Yes" for the Treaty we will end up with even more hair-shirt budgets than we have had heretofore. I do not think he or anybody else in this debate has adequately answered how this country will meet the borrowing and budgetary requirements necessary to qualify us for the final stage of the process. Will it involve cutting public expenditure or will it involve widespread privatisation of publicly owned companies? What are the measures by which the Government intend to achieve those budgetary targets? The public are entitled to that information.

Finally, the argument that is being made that if we do not agree to the Treaty we will be left behind raises a fundamental concern about the concept of European Union. We are only one of two countries holding a referendum — we are talking about common European citizenship — where the citizens will have a say in whether they favour common European citizenship and all that goes with that. Out of 300 million people, eight million will have a direct say in this process. I have to ask, are we being told that the kind of European Union to which we are committing ourselves is such that if the citizens of one of the smallest member states of that Community have reservations about the content of the Treaty and decide to genuinely express those reservations in a referendum, the bigger players in the Community will simply leave us behind? That raises a very serious concern and one that needs to be addressed by those who support the Treaty.

Minister for the Environment (Mr. Smith)

The Maastricht Treaty opens a new chapter in the social, economic and environmental development of Europe and of Ireland. Ireland's interests are inextricably linked with the future of Europe: not simply the Europe of the Community, but the wider European economic area and a Europe which also has an opening to the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. Ireland has already established an important place and role in Europe; our contribution is recognised and our interests will best be served by participating fully in its further development.

The Maastricht Treaty affects my areas of responsibility in a number of ways, and I propose now to elaborate on these. I will deal in turn with the implications in terms of electoral arrangements, with the leading role of the EC in advancing environment policies and with the substantial and continuing EC support on which Ireland depends in developing infrastructural programmes for roads, water and sanitary services.

One of my principal ministerial duties in terms of facilitating the referendum on Maastricht is to promote the Referendum (Amendment) Bill, 1992, which is a short technical Bill. Its purpose is to prescribe a statement in relation to the subject matter of the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1992. The proposed statement is set out, in Irish and in English, in the appendix to section 1 of the Bill. It sets out in straightforward, neutral terms the subject of the referendum. As in previous referenda, the prescribed statement will be printed on the polling cards sent to all electors and will also be printed on posters displayed in, and in the precincts of, all polling stations. A copy of the statement will be sent to each postal voter and to every elector whose name is on the special voters list.

Presiding officers will be authorised to assist blind, incapacitated and illiterate voters by reading out the prescribed statement to them where necessary and asking them whether they wish to vote in favour of or against the proposal and then marking the ballot paper in accordance with the voters' answers. These arrangements are identical with those made in relation to previous referenda on Bills to amend the Constitution.

The information arrangements provided for in this Bill are additional to the permanent provisions of the referendum law under which copies of Bills to amend the Constitution are made available in post offices for inspection free of charge and for sale at a price not exceeding 2p.

Section 2 provides that in the case of any future referendum a statement for the information of voters may be prescribed by resolution of both Houses of the Oireachtas. This means that the Referendum (Amendment) Bill when passed will become part of permanent referendum law and will obviate the need for special legislation for each referendum in the future. However, the Oireachtas will have an opportunity to debate and approve each statement which would be drafted by the Attorney General in consultation with the Department of the Environment and the Department sponsoring the relevant Constitution Amendment Bill.

The new Treaty arrangements contain provisions pertaining to voting rights for citizens of the new union. The Treaty provides that every citizen of the union residing in a member state of which he or she is not a national will be entitled to vote and stand for election in that member state. We already grant the right to vote at European elections to nationals of every member state resident here. However, under our existing law the right to stand for election to the European Parliament is confined to Irish citizens. An amendment to European electoral law will therefore be required to grant nationals of other member states resident here the right to stand for election to the European Parliament if they so wish.

The Treaty also provides that every citizen of a member state resident in another member state will be entitled to vote and stand at local elections in the member state in which he resides. This has no new implications for our electoral law. As the House is aware, every person of voting age normally resident in the country, irrespective of nationality, has been entitled to vote at local elections here since 1963 and has been entitled to stand for election to a local authority here since 1974. There are over 19,000 electors on the current register of electors who are nationals of other member states.

The new voting provision will allow Irish nationals resident in other member states to vote and stand at local elections in the member states in which they reside. Irish nationals resident in Britain already enjoy these rights. Our citizens resident in Belgium and the Netherlands also have the right to vote at European elections but have no right to vote or stand for election in other member states. We heartily welcome the opening up of democratic electoral rights provided for in the Treaty. In a very special and practical way it underlines the essential unity of Community citizenship.

Membership of the Community has provided many important benefits for Ireland, not least a chance to participate in and influence the development of the Community's progressive environmental policies. I would like to describe briefly the evolution of the Community's environment policy and to relate this to the important new Treaty provisions on the environment.

Since 1973 successive EC environmental action programmes have given rise to a complex body of environmental legislation in which common standards for environmental protection have been formulated. The Community's First Environmental Action Programme, adopted in 1973, was concerned principally with the need to remedy the many serious environmental problems which then existed in the Community, mainly in its industrial heartland. The Second Environmental Action Programme essentially updated and extended the first. However, by 1983, when the Third Environment Action Programme came to be adopted, a major evolution had taken place in the approach to environmental protection policy. The preventive approach, that is, an approach requiring economic and social developments to be undertaken in such a way as to avoid the creation of environmental problems, had become central.

By 1987, when the Community adopted the Fourth Environmental Action Programme and amended the Treaty in the Single European Act, it was no longer in doubt that environmental protection was an essential component of Community policy in general and that environmental considerations were to be integral to all economic decision making. The programme extended to the end of 1992 and was concerned with establishing strict standards for environmental protection to give practical expression to the preventive approach. The activities outlined in the programme have resulted in the emergence of a body of standards applying to air and water quality, waste control, chemicals, conservation and noise and these are continually updated or expanded to take account of new developments — for example, in the biotechnology area.

The fourth programme will expire at the end of this year and will be replaced by the Fifth Environmental Action Programme which will soon be concluded. This will represent a further evolution of the Community environment policy — this time towards sustainable development. It has been drafted in the context of the Maastricht Treaty and the activities which it proposes will be subject to the Treaty's improved decision making processes.

The current basic principles and objectives of the Community's environment policy were laid down in the Single European Act in 1987. That Act inserted a dedicated environment chapter into the existing Treaty establishing a clear Community competence in this area and affirming the central role of environmental protection in all of the Community's policies. The basic provisions were that action by the Community relating to the environment shall aim: to preserve, protect and improve the quality of the environment; to contribute towards protecting human health; and to ensure a prudent and rational utilization of natural resources.

The action proposed is based on the principles that preventive measures must be taken, that environmental damage must be rectified at source and that the polluter should pay. These guiding policies of the Community on the environment have also been fully integrated into Irish environment policies and are contributing to the protection of the shared European environment.

Ireland has played a major role in the further development of the Community's stance on the environment. During the Irish Presidency, the European Council, in Dublin in June 1990 adopted a major declaration on the environment. This was the first time that EC Heads of State and Government had addressed environmental issues in a comprehensive way and made a policy statement on them.

The declaration elaborates Community policy on a wide range of global issues. It commits the Community to a leading role in seeking solutions to the major environmental challenges facing the world. At the Community level the declaration emphasises the need to build environmental considerations into policy making in all sectors, particularly in the light of completion of the internal market. It stresses the need for accelerated decisions on environmental legislation and in so doing was the direct forerunner of the new Treaty provisions on the environment.

The Maastricht Treaty expressly incorporates the objective of sustainable growth which respects the environment. It entrenches environment policy among the competences of the Community and updates existing Treaty provisions in this regard. Environment policy under Maastricht is to aim at a high level of protection, to be integrated into the definition and implementation of other Community policies and to ensure that the Community contributes to promoting measures at the international level to deal with regional or worldwide environmental problems.

As foreshadowed in the Dublin Declaration, the Maastricht Treaty contains improved decision making arrangements on environment issues. From now on decisions on environment proposals, with a small number of exceptions, will be taken by qualified majority vote of the Council and will be subject to the co-operation procedure with the European Parliament — a departure in the environment area where up to now unanimous decision was the norm. I am satisfied that the new arrangements will not only achieve the more rapid adoption of Community legislation as sought in the Dublin Declaration but will involve the European Parliament more closely in the negotiation of important environmental decisions.

A significant change introduced by the new Treaty, and one which also involves the European Parliament directly in environmental decision making, is that adoption of environment action programmes will henceforth be by co-decision with Parliament. The new co-decision procedure will give Parliament and the Council equal weight in planning overall Community environment policy and adoption of the programme will depend on both sides jointly agreeing its contents.

I am very pleased that environment is one of the few areas of the new Treaty in which it was possible to agree that this new procedure should be adopted. It represents a direct input by elected representatives into decision making in an area of high public interest. Again, this is a development which was prefigured in the Dublin Declaration, which stressed that protection of the environment is a responsibility to be shared by Governments and citizens. The declaration proposes wider dissemination of information on the environment so as to have a more informed public and guarantees that the objective of Community action on the environment will be to provide every citizen with a clean and healthy environment. As the declaration makes clear, problems cannot be solved without concerted action. In each country everyone — Government, public authorities, private undertakings, individuals and groups — must be fully involved.

The driving force behind the proposed Fifth Environmental Action Programme is the concept of sustainable development. The achievement of sustainable development is now recognised internationally as the key to dealing with worldwide environmental problems and in particular with the difficulties of the developing world. A major UN Conference on Environment and Development — UNCED — will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in a few weeks from now. Heads of State and Government, including the Taoiseach, will attend to endorse the principles and actions needed to promote sustainable development on a global basis. UNCED is an opportunity of historic importance and Deputies will know that a special debate on it has been scheduled for later this week.

The draft action programme, concentrates in particular on sectors which have the greatest environmental impact throughout the Community, such as industry, energy, transport, agriculture and tourism. Compared with many other member states, Ireland has decided natural advantages in dealing with these particular issues. Our environment is of a high quality, our industry is relatively modern and clean and our economy is based on activities in which a high premium is placed on a "green" image and clean processes. In our main industries, such as agriculture and tourism, environmental considerations have always been appreciated.

I now come to a most important effect of the Maastricht Treaty for environmental protection in Ireland. The existing Treaty arrangements demand strict Community standards. These are justified and must be implemented, but the guiding principle up to now was that consequential investment to be made in the member state had to come from national resources.

The new Treaty acknowledges, in the improved provisions relating to the Structural Funds, that the union can only succeed if the capacities of those member states on the periphery, such as Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece, are developed to their full potential. It also acknowledges, in revised Article 130s and in the special Protocol establishing a new Cohesion Fund, that environmental measures to implement community policy on the environment which involve disproportionate costs for the public authorities concerned can rank for assistance from a new Cohesion Fund. The fund, which is to be set up before the end of 1993, is a very significant addition to the existing range of Structural Funds and is one from which Ireland will benefit. It will provide financial contributions towards projects in the environment area and for the development of trans-European networks in the area of transport infrastructure. Of special importance in the light of current budgetary constraints are the provisions that the funds will now be operated with greater flexibility so as to avoid excessive demands on the budgets of the less prosperous member states.

The Cohesion Fund proposed implicity acknowledges that Community environmental policy is heavily influenced by the pollution problems of the more developed regions. Community wide action can be relatively higher in cost and lower in benefit for less developed countries such as Ireland. There will now be a means of bridging the gap between what is desirable from a Community perspective and what is affordable in the least developed regions. This fund is the first significant EC fund dedicated to the implementation of EC policy on the environment, and we will exploit it to the fullest extent possible to achieve the targets we set out in the environment action programme.

The objectives of Community policy on the environment have been well reflected in the water and sanitary services programme, which both develops and protects water resources and has a direct impact on public health. It is a programme which is fundamentally important to the economic life of the country, servicing industry, tourism and other forms of development. It affects the majority of the population, who depend on public water supplies and sewerage systems for the most basic amenities of life.

The Irish programme is geared to provide economic and domestic services within a framework of relevant Community legislation. All water supplies are provided to meet the stringent quality requirements of the EC drinking water Directive. All major sewerage schemes must advance our ability to comply with the new urban waste water treatment Directive which comes into force in June 1993. The funding objectives for this decade, set out in the environment action programme at £930 million, underline the cost to Ireland of meeting Community environmental requirements in these two areas alone. As the Government have acknowledged in the environment action programme, we need support from the Community to achieve these ambitious targets.

Water and sanitary services are currently benefiting from Structural Funds under three programmes, the operational programme for water, sanitary and other local services 1989-93; a programme concentrating on coastal sewage treatment under the Community environmental initiative ENVIREG; and environmental protection measures within the Community initiative INTERREG for the development of Border areas. In all, net Community aid of some £124 million is being provided through these programmes.

Ireland will also benefit from the new Treaty in respect of transport infrastructure which plays a crucial part in ensuring the success of other sectors of economic activity. Major transport investment is required which will enable the Irish economy exploit to the full the opportunity of the Single Market, thereby helping it tackle and solve the major structural problem of unemployment; offset the competitive disadvantages of Ireland's peripherality, particularly in the context of the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1993; integrate as far as possible the Irish transport system into the European network, with particular emphasis on improving the internal transport network, so as not to put Irish transport users in other member states, and access transport from Ireland to the rest of the Community.

Roads, for which my Department are responsible, are, as in Europe generally, the most significiant mode of overland transport. Road freight traffic is an even higher percentage of total export freight traffic. The general dominance in Europe of road traffic in overload transport reflects people's preference for car travel. The preference for the transport of goods by lorry is a product of the quality and ease of service of road transport and the flexibility and speed of door to door carriage and its price competitiveness. In our own case, these factors are compounded by our relatively short average journey lengths which make rail and transfer from road to rail generally uneconomic.

An aspect of the Treaty which has not received a great deal of attention, but which is very welcome, is the proposal to establish a Committee of the Regions. The establishment of this new consultative forum, which will be modelled on the existing Economic and Social Committee, will represent an important departure in the institutional development of the Community.

The establishment of the Committee of the Regions will give the representatives of the regions throughout the Community a direct voice in the consideration of legislation which affects their interests. There will be a formal obligation to consult the committee on draft legislation in a number of important areas of Community policy. It will be modelled on the existing Economic and Social Committee and will be consulted on draft legislation in areas such as education, culture, public health, trans-European networks and economic and social cohesion. Moreover, the committee will have a right to submit opinions on its own initiative where it considers that specific regional interests are involved.

Ireland will have a total of nine members on the new committee. The composition of Ireland's representatives on the committee will be a matter for decision by the Government in due course. I think Deputies will agree that this is a significant development in the increasing democratisation of the Community and one which allows valuable participation by public representatives in important policy making areas.

In the areas for which I am responsible, the European Community has been a leading force in the development of advanced and progressive policies. Where Ireland is concerned, the EC has not just been in the business of defining policies and setting guidelines for member states to follow. It has actively put in place support structures for the less developed countries such as Ireland and provided much of the financial means whereby these policies are being realised.

That EC support role is being emphasised and intensified in the new Maastricht arrangements. I am confident that the people of Ireland will once more firmly endorse Ireland's role and future within the wider EC opportunities which are now open to us.

Mr. Yates

I propose to share my time, when we resume, with Deputy Browne (Carlow-Kilkenny).

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Is that agreed? Agreed.

Mr. Yates

As far as I am concerned the question of Maastricht and the future of this country in Europe is a core value for the Fine Gael Party. The future of the country is dependent on being part of a federal Europe. There is no future for a country that represents 1 per cent of the population of the Community unless we are part of a wider Europe. We all know we are more dependent on exports than Japan and we are aware of the penetration of their cars, televisions and radios. The EC has removed our dependence on Britain as an export economy and has substituted Europe. How much greater our difficulties would be, given the British recession, if we did not have access to Europe.

The first point I wish to make relates to transport policy. It is absolutely vital that we overcome our biggest single disadvantage in terms of our peripheral location from the market by reducing transport costs. Without the help of European aid, the Cohesion Fund and the Structural Funds, it will not be possible to develop our airports, seaports, roads and infrastructure to the necessary level. I hope that with thes7e new funds we can set out a new transport policy that will give public transport a new priority. We did not spend one penny of the last financial tranche on inter-city rail. We do not have an integrated public transport system in Dublin. I hope that one of the major opportunities arising out of a "yes" vote to Maastricht will be light rail for Dublin and a revitalised service in other areas.

Debate adjourned.