I thank the Chairman for accommodating us at short notice. This meeting concerns Ireland's future in Europe and asks where we go from here. I will use some of my time to look back and make clear to everybody, not just in Ireland but outside, something which we all know, namely that most of us who voted "No" — the majority of the electorate — did not vote against Europe. It was not a vote against the European Union or Ireland's membership but a rejection of the Lisbon treaty, that being what we were asked to vote on. From my perspective, and that of Libertas, it is essential that Ireland is fully engaged with and at the very heart of the European Union. It would be very difficult to argue that the EU has been anything but good for Ireland or that our membership had not been extremely beneficial.
I speak with this accent because I am the product of generations of emigration from the west of Ireland. I hope that, in spite of these difficult times, my children will not be forced to emigrate, as my parents were and as I was in the late 1980s. Our membership of the European Union has contributed to the likelihood that my children will, I hope, not speak with the same accent as I do. It could be a worse accent, but not much worse.
We all recognise that the European project has been a peace process and it has, arguably, been the most successful one in the world's history. We said this during the campaign. It is a miracle that, save for the tragedies in the Balkans and here at home, there has been such peace in Europe for so long. This is extraordinary and almost unprecedented and, for this reason alone, the project is worth preserving and promoting. Slaughter on the battlefields should never revisit this continent; those battlefields should remain historic monuments and nothing more.
I see the role of Ireland in Europe as extraordinarily important. It is extraordinary because we are a small country with a small population that has a big heart and big ideas. Not for the first time in Ireland's history, we have an opportunity to bring to the continent a breath of fresh air and reinvigoration of the European ideal. We can put forward ideas and challenges to call upon our fellow citizens across Europe to rise up and grasp an opportunity for a new European renaissance. Ireland need not play second fiddle to anyone and nor need Europe — we are capable of leading. What will it take to fire up the vital energy across Europe so we can be world beaters?
Libertas believes the citizens of Europe must feel this is their project. We must call on them to be part of this and give them a sense of ownership, make them stakeholders, as the cliché says. How can we do this? It is difficult and challenging because Europe is an abstract and obscure thing to hundreds of millions of working people. Vaclav Havel said "Europe speaks to my head but says nothing to my heart". How do we touch the hearts of these people and make them feel Europe is something they are part of and that listens to them? How do we make them feel Europe is something they can contribute to? Perhaps I am too simple but the only mechanism I am aware of to make people feel like stakeholders is the exercise of democracy at the ballot box. This is what makes us stakeholders in the miracle of European democracy, which has been established across the European Union since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
This document contains the so-called European constitution, which was drafted by the then chairman of the praesidium and his crew. This is an affront to the idea of participatory democracy, of reaching out and touching people's hearts and making them stakeholders. It is an affront to it because it is the embodiment of the worst examples of what so-called elitism can bring about in Europe. If anybody was confused about the fact or doubted it before our referendum result, they just look at the evidence. I am not talking about here at home. I know politicians must engage in politics and so on. I understand all of that. Let us look outside of our own country and look at the reaction from people who would not give their own citizens a say. During his presidential election campaign, and after the French people had categorically rejected the formula democratically, as had the Dutch people, President Nicolas Sarkozy, the preening prince of the Élysée Palace, promised a mini-treaty and instead delivered something almost 10,000 words longer with almost no differences except a name change to by-pass the need to have a referendum in France. This is a certain contempt we are seeing. that people are chastised, that the integrity and motives of people on the "No" side and on the "Yes" are questioned. What do they want us to be? It is inferred that Ireland is turning eurosceptic. It is not. We are responsible. We are mature. We are very cerebral when it comes to analysing issues like this. We did not say "No" to Europe. We all know that. We are calling on Europe to step up and listen not just to us but to almost half a billion people across Europe who need to be made stakeholders in this project because if they are not it will fail. The European Union is too valuable a project, too great an idea to be dashed on the rocks of elitist political ambitions.
On 12 June we handed back Europe to the almost half a billion people to whom it belongs. Resolving this anti-democratic formula is not Ireland's problem. Immediately people ask what are we going to do about it. The French, the Dutch, we and, I believe, most of the member states and citizens of the European Union would say exactly the same thing. The problem does not lie with any of us. The problem is with the rejection of the ideals of Jean Monnet, of Schumann, of De Gasperi who would not subscribe to this project. This is not the Europe those founders set out to build. This is a rejection of it. It twists what Europe should be. We should be very proud of the majority of the electorate in this great country who alone fought our Thermopylae and stood up for European democracy. Against all the bullying and pressure from outside we still stood up and did the right thing. I have travelled right across this continent since our result and I am absolutely convinced that the great majority of the European people are with us and with the sovereign decision that the Irish people made and, by God, that decision must be heeded. It is not good enough to be so condescending to the citizens of Europe and to all of us, whether we voted "Yes" or "No", as to reject our democratic decision and say "Do it again, we will put a ribbon on it, we will throw you a few bones, you are bad Europeans". We are not bad Europeans; we are serious, mature, thinking, good, progressive, Europeans and that is the attitude and disposition needed to ensure the long term future of the European Union and ensure that we are capable of being world leaders. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
