Before the debate begins I would remind Senators of the arrangements that have been made in regard to the debating of motions. The time allowed on any motion shall, unless the Seanad otherwise orders, not exceed a period of six hours in the aggregate. Accordingly, if the debate is not concluded earlier, it is proposed that the question be put at 10 p.m. this evening and that the proposer of the motion be called on at 9.40 p.m., at the latest, to reply. It is implicit in this that if the House wishes to adjourn for meals for longer than an hour it is thereby curtailing the six-hour period allowed for the debate.
Membership of EEC: Motion.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
I move.
That Seanad Éireann notes the White Paper "Membership of the European Communities—Implications for Ireland".
This is a motion that was put down to enable this House to discuss the question of Irish membership of the EEC or Common Market. It is advisable that discussions, not merely in the Seanad but generally throughout the country, regarding our entry into the Common Market should be undertaken and encouraged. It is not my purpose in moving this motion to suggest that either the Government or anyone else should particularly take the initiative in that direction, although I think it is clear that it is the duty and the responsibility of the Government to see that not merely the two Houses of the Oireachtas but the community and the country generally are kept fully informed both of the negotiations that are at present under way and of the implications for the various sectors in business and industry which would ensue from membership of the Common Market. The White Paper referred to in the motion is entitled Membership of the European Communities— Implications for Ireland. That White Paper sets out the general framework of the Community which we propose to enter if our application is approved.
I think it right to give very briefly my understanding of the structure and framework of the Community which we are seeking to enter. The Rome Treaty prescribed that the tasks entrusted to the Community would be carried out by four institutions. These are the Parliament, the Council, the Commission and the Courts. We could roughly equate the Council with a cabinet as we know it in this or any other democratic country. We could, speaking broadly, equate the Commission with the Civil Service in a parliamentary democracy. So far as the courts are concerned that needs no particular explanation.
The four institutions that I have mentioned can act through the Council and through the Commission in a number of different ways. There is, first of all, the authority to adopt regulations which can be of general application and binding on all member states. Secondly, they can issue directives which may be addressed to one or to more of the member states, and so far as the directives go they are intended to achieve a particular result without detailing the manner in which that result is to be obtained. The method or procedure for achieving the result sought in the directive is left to the individual member or members to which it is directed. They can also take and issue decisions. These decisions may be addressed to a Government of a member state or even to individuals. So far as the decisions are concerned, the intention is that they will be binding in every respect on the Government, individual or firm or whatever, to whom they are directed. Recommendations can be suggested. These recommendations are not intended to have any binding force.
Broadly speaking, that is the structure of the Community which we are seeking to enter. Every Member of the Seanad has already formed his own views and appreciations of the relative importance of the various institutions which I have mentioned. The Commission which, as I said, I equate to a Civil Service, appear to be an extremely important part of the framework of the Common Market Community. They could be regarded as the executive body of the Community and they have responsibility as regards the formulation of the Community policies.
So far as the courts are concerned, they also have particular functions. I can correctly summarise the four main functions of the courts by saying that it is the duty of the courts to interpret the Treaty and the Community laws; secondly, to adjudicate on the legality of the Acts of the Council and the Commission; thirdly, to adjudicate on disputes between member states in relation to matters falling within the scope of the Treaty; and fourthly to ensure the implementation of the provisions of the Treaty by the various institutions of the Community.
As I see it, that is the general structure and framework. The decision which faces this country—and it is a decision which faces everyone in the country—is whether we want to enter that Community. It is frequently said that we have no real choice in this matter—and that if Britain goes in, we have to go in, and that if Britain stays out, we must stay out. I do not accept that point of view. I favour our application for entry into the Common Market; I favour joining the Common Market if our application is accepted; but I do not agree with the view that we have no choice in the matter. We have a choice and it is one which it is our job, as public representatives, to explain as clearly and as explicitly as we can to the people. It may be a difficult choice for some people, but it is a choice which does exist and should be made by this country as a sovereign nation freely making a positive choice.
We are entitled to make this choice from the standpoint of what we regard as our own best interests. It is a choice between remaining in isolation politically, culturally and economically or joining freely with other countries in building and developing a new European Community. The choice should be made in the knowledge that it is a realistic one, that we have the option of accepting membership or of rejecting membership.
This brings us to the question of arguing out the pros and cons of membership. I do not accept that, merely because Great Britain enters, we have no choice in the matter. I do not accept that, if Great Britain is not accepted as a member, or if her application is not accepted ipso facto, our application for membership should be withdrawn and determined. I appreciate, and I think it is important that we should look on this aspect of the matter, that the freedom of our choice, the difficulty in some way of many people in making that choice, will depend on the emphasis which they, as individuals, may place on different aspects of the implications which exist for us in this matter.
It is true to say that there are a number of arguments which have been advanced against membership of the Common Market. I could summarise these by saying that the principal arguments are, first of all, that it would lead to a loss of national identity; secondly, that it would involve a surrender of our sovereign rights as a nation; thirdly, that it would lead to our domination—because we are a small nation—by bigger nations; fourthly, that it would and must mean increased competition so far as our industries and products generally are concerned, and because of that that it would involve large-scale unemployment in this country.
It is easy to dismiss the argument about loss of national identity. At times I feel that there is no great realism in that argument. At the same time, we must take many factors into account. When we talk of national identity and surrendering or losing some of our rights as a sovereign nation, we must see the thing in perspective and we must realise that, no matter what agreements are made between different nations, any agreement involves a certain limitation for the parties to the agreement. If there is a loss of sovereignty involved in going into the Common Market, there is also a loss of sovereignty involved for every other State—that is in the Common Market or is seeking to get into the Common Market—and to my mind, the bigger the State the bigger the loss of sovereignty involved. Viewing the matter in that light, we can see that the sacrifice we might make in that way will be less than the sacrifice made by other countries.
However, the argument does not end there. There are certain cultural values that could be in some way endangered, and this is the kind of problem that we have to weigh up for ourselves. So far as I am concerned, I want my children to grow up in a country that would maintain the kind of Christian values which were treasured by my parents and their parents before them. I do not mean merely the question of civic codes, or criminal codes, or codes of conduct, or standards of behaviour, but also the deep spiritual and cultural values which exist in this country, and which some of us may not have any confidence of being fully maintained in our time. That is the kind of thing that troubles people in relation to entry into the Common Market.
I take the view, rightly or wrongly, that a nation that has been able for 700 years or thereabouts to maintain its national identity, to maintain the kind of values about which I have been speaking, even in face of foreign occupation, is hardly likely to lose these values or its national identity by associating freely under treaty arrangements with other nations. That is the point of view which I would express in arguing out the question of cultural values, or the possible loss of national identity and the question of possible surrender of our national rights.
As regards the point of view expressed that our entry into the Common Market would entail being dominated by the big countries who would be our partners in that venture, it is true to say that in the modern world a small country living in isolation must pay the penalty of that isolation. One of the penalties is that a small isolated country has virtually no influence on the course of events, whereas if through community effort, through joining with others under treaty arrangements, they are enabled to have a say in the shaping of that community—in this instance, the shaping of a new Europe —then, at least, there is something concrete being gained. We cannot live entirely in isolation. We must trade. If we can have a voice in trading arrangements or in political decisions, then so far from being cowed by the argument that we would be dominated by larger countries, I would feel that we were making an advance for this country by putting ourselves in a position where we would have at least some influence on the course of events.
The other arguments are that there would be increased competition and that this would result in dislocation of industry and in large-scale unemployment. There is no doubt that there would be increased competition, and what we must do is to try to weigh up the situation and to see if the advantages which might accrue from membership would outweigh the disadvantages which would be posed by increased competition. In addition, with regard to employment and unemployment, we must make the best assessment possible as to what will be the effect on employment in this country. We must assess the degree of redundancy that would come about and if redundancy can be offset in the ordinary way by wastage, and figure out the net result at the end of that to give the net unemployment likely to result in Irish industry. That is the kind of information that can only come through the vocational organisations dealing with various industries and must be compiled and issued by the Government in order to get informed discussion and informed views with regard to the implications in that field.
I have been dealing as briefly as I can—and we can only deal briefly with this matter today because we are limited in time—with the arguments as I see them against entry into the Common Market. There are however a number of arguments of a solid sort for entry into the Common Market. I feel that the Government and those who feel as I do that it is a good thing to enter the Common Market should emphasise in a discussion like this the arguments we see in favour of it.
The first argument I made a note of is one which I notice is dealt with in the conclusions in the White Paper. It is that we are Europeans traditionally, historically, geographically and culturally. We form part of Europe, and forming part of Europe as Europeans, it seems to me we should play our part in Europe and particularly when the opportunity arises, as it does through the Common Market, of shaping a new Europe.
Secondly, I think the objectives to which the Community have set their faces are worthwhile objectives, particularly for a small country. I do not know whether I am entirely correct in saying that the objectives I have noted down here are spelt out in the same kind of detail as I see them. I think that, broadly speaking in any event, one of the worthwhile objectives of the Community is to seek to end the conflicts which have divided Western Europe so often in the past.
Another object is to restore Europe's self-respect, to enable Europe to play a role in the world which is commensurate with her cultural heritage and economic strength.
Another objective which I think would find a very responsive chord in this country is by joint action to seek to improve the working conditions and living standards of the people—to try to abolish outdated barriers which split Western Europe into small fragmented markets.
Another objective which again would find a responsive chord here is to seek to help the less favoured areas of the Community and their associates, and the final objective is to try to form the basis of a united states of Europe or whatever you like to call it.
I feel that the penalties for staying out of a European movement are also likely to be so heavy, even if we look on it in a purely material plain, purely from the point of view of economics, that it would not be worth our while to contemplate that seriously.
On the other hand, if we go in we have access to larger new markets, some of which we tried and failed to gain access to in the past. I believe all of these things are worthwhile. I wonder what we, in our turn, can offer to Europe. It may seem to many that whatever we can offer will be very small, but I think we can offer something. In the past this country, small as it is, has had an influence and an effect in Europe far outweighing our size either in terms of acres or population. I think that we can make a contribution to Europe, and the best summary I can find of my views on this appeared in a pamphlet called Ireland and Europe, written by Deputy, then Senator, Garret FitzGerald which states:
What can we bring to the new Europe? We can add something small but distinctive to its cultural heritage. We can help to strengthen the great Christian tradition of Europe which is still so powerful a force in our country and we can bring our unique blend of the Christian and liberal traditions which have made our country a real Christian democracy. Moreover, we can bring the power to act in a small way as a bridge, a bridge between the British and the people of the Continent, a bridge between the peoples of Europe, to which Ireland belongs, and the United States, so much of which belongs to Irish people; and finally, a bridge between our Europe and the new States of Africa and Asia, some at least of whose leaders regard Ireland as the country which gave the lead to the anti-colonial struggle of the 1950's. These contributions are small things and they will be willingly given. In return, Ireland seeks full partnership with the other nations of Europe within an enlarged Community. We hope it, too, will be willingly accorded.
I think that summarises the kind of contribution we can make for our part even though it may not, in terms of material wealth or manpower, be any great contribution. Nevertheless, I believe it is a real contribution and the kind of contribution which the developing Europe, as we see it before us, would welcome from a small country.
I second the motion and wish to avail of the opportunity to make a brief contribution to the debate. I do not propose in the short time at my disposal to cover the ground already adequately covered by Senator O'Higgins, except to say that I agree completely with his views in regard to the often discussed and I think sometimes greatly exaggerated question of the loss of sovereignty by this country. If the nations of Europe who have been at war for centuries, like Germany and France and other countries, are prepared to suffer some limitation to their sovereignty in the interests of lasting peace in Europe, we in this small country, who have always regarded ourselves as a bastion of freedom and an example to other freedom-loving countries, should be prepared to suffer some limitations of our sovereignty, too.
I should like to deal more specifically with what has perhaps caused more concern even than the cause of national sovereignty, and that is the question of the position of Irish industry if we enter the Common Market. At the outset we should accept—and I do not think everybody in this country has yet accepted it—that the European Economic Community are a fact of political, social and economic life. I sometimes feel that our attitude to the Common Market is something like our attitude up to quite recent months in regard to the coming of decimalisation. It just could not happen. But it has happened. Now I think we have accepted the fact of decimalisation and it is remarkable how the country and all its various facets, financial and commercial, has settled down to operate this system effectively and with an increasing degree of expertise.
Whether the country becomes a member of the Community or not it will have to face fundamental changes in all its institutions in the years ahead. It is right and necessary that there should be a full and free discussion on all aspects of our membership or nonmembership of the Common Market. Every effort should be made by the Government and the Opposition to provide dialogue for or against Irish entry. Belligerent speeches by Government Ministers in which the views of anti-marketeers are belittled or denigrated are not the way to secure support for the European Economic Community. Arguments against entry should be answered in full by Government speakers and others. The disadvantages of free trade, of which there are many, should be spelled out clearly and honestly. The Irish people, over the years, have demonstrated their capacity to face up to difficult situations provided they believe in the rightness of the cause and appreciate fully its ultimate advantages. The fact that the Irish can be led and not driven is as true to day as it was over the course of centuries.
The disadvantages of the Common Market have been played up to too great an extent. It is time a more realistic and better effort was made by the Government speakers to highlight the advantages of entry into the Common Market, not only the advantages of entry but the disadvantages of staying out. The Treaty of Rome states that we will have to endure freedom of movement and of labour between our small country and the Continental countries. This is a fact of life that we must accept.
In this regard it would be as well to look back a little to the position of Irish industry and how it has developed over the past 40 or 50 years. I feel it is necessary to do that so as to make a proper appraisal of our current situation and what needs to be done to equip the industries of this country to face up to competition and take the advantages that are undoubtedly available in the very enlarged Common Market.
Irish industry, as it now exists, developed mainly under the high protection policies in the period after 1932. Prior to that the policy was one of moderate protection for industry with the emphasis on agricultural exports. Whatever merits protection may have had nearly 40 years ago, the Government certainly did not visualise an industrial structure that would be called on to compete in conditions of free trade. The Common Market could not have been foreseen 40 years ago when the then Government decided on a vigorous policy of protection for Irish industry. The aim then was largely to cater for a small market to make the Irish economy self-sufficient to the greatest possible degree. Under that policy of protection the sole aim of an Irish industrialist was to cater for a small market which was widely diversified, often irrespective of the increased cost to the Irish consumer.
Every encouragement was given to Irish and foreign firms to set up plans inside the tariff wall and to provide the necessary goods for the small Irish population. This country was not alone in adopting a protectionist policy 40 years ago. Protection in industry was an accepted policy by countries all over the world, many of these countries being far greater and far richer than our small country.
We now face a situation where, under the Treaty of Rome, the position is almost completely reversed. Irish manufacturers and industrialists, instead of being called on to serve a small market, will now have to compete not only in their own country against outside industrialists and manufacturers but they will have to seek viable and profitable markets among the 250,000,000 people who will constitute the enlarged Community. This will call for a vigorous and realistic policy of adaptation of existing industry and, even more important in my view, a marketing policy to ensure that whatever emphasis is laid on the adaptation, reorganisation and rationalisation of Irish industry will be directed to those industries that can hope to compete successfully in the European market. Instead of adopting a policy of trying to make every Irish industry efficient or low cost to some degree, a realistic policy should be adopted by limiting our scarce funds to those industries that offer a genuine hope of expansion under free trade conditions.
However unpopular it may be, it should be realised that certain industries, not necessarily small ones, cannot and will not compete in free trade conditions. Provision should be made now, and not when the industry is forced out of business by competition from abroad, to look at the situation realistically and begin finding alternative employment for the staffs involved. A number of cases have occurred recently where well established, or apparently well established Irish industries, have suddenly closed their doors, leaving hundreds of Irish workers without employment. It would have been far more realistic, but perhaps less advantageous from the point of view of getting votes, if a few years ago the Government, with the information at their disposal, had taken steps to anticipate the closing of these factories and arranged to have either alternative industries, which would be viable in free trade conditions, or else arrange for the retraining of the workers so that they would be ready when the closure came to enter new and more viable industries.
We have seen recently that the Minister for Finance has increased taxation on companies. This is a retrograde step in view of the necessity for all firms and companies to re-equip and modernise in the face of European competition. Any company, whether big or small, can find the necessary capital to re-equip itself from only two sources. It can either do it from internal sources, which is the most desirable way because it means it must accumulate capital out of profits, or else it must borrow money from the Government or from the bank or get handouts by way of grants. By far the most desirable of these three is the type of financing that comes from internal sources. Several Senators, including myself, paid tribute in that regard to an Irish State industry in this House yesterday, Irish Steel Holdings, which managed to finance its extensions and modernisation programme mainly from its own resources. It is quite unrealistic to rely on any Irish business or industry to accumulate sufficient capital to modernise its plant if it has to pay taxation in the region of 60 per cent.
Along with emphasising the importance of it, and assisting industries that would be viable in free trade conditions to modernise their plant in good time, we should be taking the necessary steps to organise our education and training establishments. In this regard, I should like to pay tribute to the steps that have been taken, particularly by organisations such as AnCO and others, to train and re-train Irish labour for higher skilled jobs.
The Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement must be considered in the same context as the European Economic Community. In my view, the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement has been a disaster for a number of our industries. It has had very serious repercussions, as we all know from the mounting volume of consumer goods that are coming into the country, without any compensating advantages accruing to the agricultural sector. It is now obvious that the timing of the Agreement was wrong; and the country was quite unprepared for the rush of imports that have caused serious unemployment, particularly in the textile and footwear industries. In my view no further tariff reductions under the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement should take place until our negotiations with the EEC are concluded. Meanwhile, steps should be taken, where serious injury has been done to certain industries such as the footwear industry, to invoke the relevant article in the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement whereby up to 3 per cent of the value of total imports can be relieved of the reduction in tariffs. That 3 per cent would, in fact, mean a very small percentage in terms of actual imports, but it would mean a tremendous lot to the men and women who have lost their jobs in the affected industries during the past few years.
There is an obligation on those who oppose our entry into the Common Market to demonstrate that the alternative offers better opportunities. One of the most important things in the Treaty of Rome is its regional policy, where it provides for aid to less favoured regions in order to encourage balanced regional growth. Our regional policy is being developed, I hope, with that end in view. Every effort should be made to make it compatible with the requirements of the EEC so that when our negotiations come to a successful conclusion, which I hope they will, we will be able to adapt straight away to the regional requirements and ensure that the necessary assistance is forthcoming to the west and south-west of Ireland, an area that has suffered so much from emigration over the years.
Many people seem to approach the question of membership of the European Economic Community on the basis that we have already a satisfactory economy, that we have a viable economic system and that we can compete indefinitely in a reasonably satisfactory way on the basis of this system. That, of course, could be taken as a compliment to the present Government. To that extent I welcome this approach; but it is an assumption which needs very careful examination and one which, I think, is not entirely true.
At the present time we have approximately 30 per cent of the population depending mainly on agriculture, but only half of what our agricultural community produces can be used at home. This means that we have to find markets abroad for approximately half our agricultural produce. These markets are almost all buyers' markets. They are markets in which a very poor price is paid. Very often they are markets in which we can sell only by heavily subsidising agricultural produce.
This is one of the basic problems we face today. A second basic problem is the one of unemployment. This is a chronic problem which has been with us for the past 50 years—that we have been unable to absorb all those who wish to find employment in this country. It is almost certain that in the future agriculture will absorb even fewer people in employment than it has in the past. In the last ten years something in the region of 100,000 people have left agriculture, and this drift from the land will undoubtedly continue whether or not we are in the European Economic Community. It may not be quite as rapid a move from the land as it was in the past, but it certainly will continue to a greater or lesser extent.
Employment therefore will have to be provided mainly in industry. A certain amount of increased employment can be provided in the services sector, but the bulk will have to be provided by industry. In addition to those who are moving out of agriculture, we have the school leavers. It has not been possible to fully absorb even those up to now. If more people continue to move from agriculture, if emigration is curtailed —it is less than it was in the past and this is certainly something we all hope will happen—and if the population increases, and again there are indications that it is doing so, then we will have a significant increase in the number for whom employment must be found. This employment must be found in industry which means that there must be a very significant expansion of industry to provide the necessary employment.
The question which faces us is this: can this be done? Can more employment be found? Can industry be expanded under our present economic system? Every politician, every party, has its own views, its own policies, its own pet ideas as to how industry can be expanded and how employment can be found. Many of these ideas are good, but, nevertheless, I believe that these are only marginal helps. They may help to some extent but they will not bring about the significant improvement, the significant expansion, that is necessary to deal with this problem.
If these two basic problems—finding a satisfactory outlet for our agricultural products and finding increased employment in industry—are incapable of being solved under our economic system, or our present economic circumstances, then I think we are bound to consider very carefully any other solution to these problems. I believe that it is in this context we should consider membership of the EEC. If membership of the EEC will solve these problems, or will show a prospect of at least improving this situation, membership is something we must seriously consider.
In considering membership of the European Community we should not approach it—and many people seem to do so—as though it were a club that we might join for certain benefits that are available; but, on the other hand, if we do not join we can go on in much the same way as we have hitherto. In certain circumstances, if we do not join, things will not by any means be as they were before. If we do not join the EEC we may be facing a completely new situation. To give the most extreme example, if Britain, for instance, joins and we do not, then things certainly will not be as they were before. It is not a simple alternative of joining for benefits or of just going on as we are. It is a dynamic situation, a situation which is changing all the time. It is not a question of joining a club or not joining. It is a matter of opting for one of two buses, each going in a completely different direction. We cannot stand still. We must decide in which direction we are going. Consequently, it is a very difficult problem and is one about which we have to make a positive decision one way or the other.
I have suggested that we should consider membership of the European Community as a means of solving two of our basic problems. Of course, we must ask ourselves: can membership solve these problems? Is membership likely to solve these problems? So far as agriculture and agricultural produce are concerned, it is almost certain that membership would, if not solve this problem, certainly improve the situation very considerably. We would have in the European Community a guaranteed market for our agricultural goods. We would have fair prices and very much higher prices. We would have an enlightened effort, under the Mansholt Plan, to improve the conditions of the agricultural community generally.
I do not propose to go into the details of these improvements or to go into the prices that are being paid in EEC countries. However, we should consider one very dramatic contrast in regard to agricultural prices. In considering the circumstances under which we sell our goods at the moment we should consider the policy of the country to which we sell most of our goods as compared to the policy of the European Community. We sell most of our agricultural goods to Britain and the policy there is to pay as little as possible for these goods—to get them as cheaply as possible—whereas the policy of the European Community is to give a fair deal to farmers and to pay prices which will ensure, as far as possible, that the farming community have the same standard of living as the rest of the community. There is a diametrically opposite point of view and policy in regard to what the Government of Great Britain will do in regard to the farm produce we sell them. Without going into details and without measuring exactly the different situation in which we are going to find ourselves in the EEC we are, undoubtedly, going to get a better deal for our farm produce and for our farmers in the EEC.
As regards industry and employment, the situation is not by any means as clear cut. We will, of course, have a huge market. We will have unlimited opportunity to sell our goods. This is very important because our home market is not large enough to absorb the necessary output of industry which would, in turn, give the employment that is so necessary. We must have a large amount of exports and we must have them in favourable conditions and in a market where we would, at least, get a fair deal and where we would not be deterred or hindered by tariff walls. We will have favourable conditions in the European Community. We will have as good a chance as any other member of the Community to sell our goods.
That does not mean of course that in the Community we are going to have a guaranteed market, guaranteed prices or guaranteed success. If our industry is to succeed in the Community it must be highly efficient industry. We must have industrialists and staff who are imaginative in their approach, skill and marketing and we must have competitive prices. The fact is that the opportunity is there in favourable conditions and favourable circumstances. There is the possibility that we can expand industry and provide increased employment in industry in the European Community. If we do not succeed in the Community, then it is fair to say that we cannot succeed anywhere. Consequently, there are strong arguments for joining the Community from this point of view.
Industry must expand and there is no reason why our various industries should not be successful in the Community. Already we have many industries which are exporting successfully. They export to various countries throughout the world and export to countries within the Community. There is no reason why many more of our industries should not do likewise given the proper opportunity. Of course, it is true that some of our industries will collapse under the competition which will exist in EEC conditions. It is true that some of them, through no fault of their own or some of them through inefficiency, will be unable to stand up to the competition in the EEC. On the other hand, we will have many industries which will expand and thrive within the Community.
Some people who are opposed to our joining the Community talk about the dangers of some of our industries closing down. We are not in the Community at the moment and some of our industries are closing down. Industries have closed down over the last 20 or 30 years. This is a fact of life in every country. Every country has had the experience where, for one reason or another, some industries were not able to compete. This is nothing new. In the Community, our industries will have an excellent chance and wonderful opportunities. I am confident that our good industries will expand and that we will have further industries. It will give an opportunity to industry to expand and to give the employment which is vitally necessary if we are to survive as a country.
The main objections have been made in regard to our membership of the Community. One of these objections was that our industries are too small, that they would be unable to compete against the huge industries and huge cartels that exist in the European Community. The other objection—which I will deal with in greater detail in a moment—is the fact that we are a small country and that we would be powerless. The Community has many, many small industries and many successful small industries. Not only in the Community but in most of the developed countries of the western world small industries do very well and play a large part in all of the big manufacturing countries.
In Great Britain 91 per cent of all manufacturing industries employ less than 100 people. In the USA the figure is almost the same. In the USA 68 per cent of industries employ less than 20 people. In Japan 98 per cent of the industries employ less than 100 people and Japan gives the impression of a country with huge industries. In France 95 per cent of the industries employ less than 50 people. In Sweden the figure is 85 per cent employing less than 50 people. In Norway, 94 per cent employ less than 50.
It may be seen from these figures that small industries can thrive in the Community or in any developed manufacturing country. It is not a question of big industries; it is a question of efficient industries. It is a matter of industries which have carved out a niche for themselves in that they can make something people want and can make it better than any other country. There is no danger, therefore, because our industries are small by international standards.
We will also be told that we are a small country, that our power in the EEC will be small too, and that we will not be able to fight our corner or make our will felt. Every effort has been made to ensure that the small countries in the Community are able to get their points of view across and considered. In regard to the Council of Ministers, the Commission, the Parliament, the small countries have voting powers and have strength in these institutions which is far greater in proportion than those of the bigger countries. I do not propose to give all the figures, but in the Parliament the Big Four would have 36 members each. Ireland, Norway and Denmark would have ten each. This is out of all proportion to the relative populations of the big countries and of the three smaller countries. This exists right through all the institutions, every effort being made to ensure that the small countries have the opportunity to have an effective vote, and are not outvoted or dominated by the larger countries.
It is not usual for the big countries to be voting against the small countries. They will be voting on issues which vary from country to country. They will often be voting on agricultural questions. When agriculture is an issue, France will almost certainly vote with us, as well as several other countries. On every issue there will be a different line-up, so that the small countries are most unlikely to be frequently dominated by the bigger countries. The most conclusive argument that I can make about the suggestion that the smaller countries will be dominated is that the existing small countries in the EEC are the most enthusiastic members.
I should like to say a few words about the question of sovereignty. This is a question about which many people are unhappy and it is true nobody can be completely happy about the fact that our sovereignty will be affected to some extent. We are naturally reluctant to give away part of something for which we had to fight so hard for many hundreds of years. Political sovereignty is not of much use if we are to be economically dominated. It is not simply a matter of giving away everything and getting nothing in return. We are sharing in the sovereignty of all the countries in the Community. We are getting something as well as giving away. The sovereignty that we are giving away or sharing is limited and clearly defined and not anything like the exaggerated picture which is painted by those who oppose membership of the Community.
We are not the first country to be asked to surrender some of our sovereignty. All of the existing Six have done it. Most of these are countries with long historic traditions, proud countries, who have, nevertheless, surrendered some part of their sovereignty and do not appear to have regrets. All the applicants are fully conscious of what is involved and yet they consider it is worth doing.
It is time a critical attitude was brought to bear on this. I hope to be constructively critical. I regard that a person is either a fool or a moron if he has made up his mind completely on the Common Market. We have not yet got the facts. A negotiating team is being sent out to probe and bring back the facts and enlighten us. When they come to an agreement, only then will we be in full possession of the facts. Then it will be up to us, as responsible Irish men and women, to assess the situation calmly and decide by referendum whether we accept or reject what the negotiating team has brought back.
I do not intend to cause any embarrassment to our negotiating team who are doing a vital and essential job but I would caution the political parties. Even if Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are endorsing completely our joining the EEC and saying we have no alternative, I am not at all sure that the Irish electorate, when confronted in a referendum with the problem of answering the question for or against, will accept the decision of the two parties concerned. There will be a great deal of individual thinking. The influence of political parties is not what it has been in the past and, therefore, I regard this issue as far more open than Dáil debates would suggest it is. We should then get on with the probing.
If I might interpret Senator Ryan's very fine speech in favour of EEC, the dominant fact emerging from it was that we are part of Europe and, therefore, we should play our part with Europe. I suggest we are doing that. In fact, we regard ourselves as part of the human race. We are trying within the limit of our resources in all the organisations concerned—European-based ones in Strasbourg, Commonwealth ones based in England, or UN in New York—to play our part to the fullest in them. I hope that we may continue for a long time to do that. Therefore those arguments based on our great standing as Europeans, and so on, I take with a grain of salt.
By and large, the main argument that comes down is an economic one. We want to get into this because we want to sell beef and milk and milk products. There is a great deal of substance in that argument. To whom are we going to sell the milk? Who is going to buy our milk products within that Community, but England? In other words, joining is a device for trying to extract a certain higher price out of England and to get a greater slice of the British market. Make no mistake about it, our selling teams have tried hard enough in past 30, 40 or 50 years to sell on the Continent.
You have only to look at the adverse balance of trade, which is at least four to one, with France, Germany, Holland, all the other countries, to see how we have failed to sell on the Continent. Guaranteeing access to the market does not guarantee that you can sell there. Guaranteeing us the right to place Irish butter on the French market does not guarantee that we can make the Frenchman eat it. We can take the example from 15 years ago, when Denmark sent butter here during a period of shortage. The Irish people took very unkindly to that because it was a different type from what we were used to. The people of the Continent have their types and already have their marketing organisations going. Therefore, let us not delude ourselves that we shall be selling anywhere else but largely in the British market, if we enter the European Economic Community.
We want to get there to sell beef and milk products. That brings the Common Market down to bedrock. In other words, it is a plan by economists.
Goodness knows, if this country were to be saved, we had the second and Third Programmes. Targets were set. An increase of 4 or 5 per cent was projected in regard to employment and production. Dr. Lucey has remarked that the only figure on target is that for the removal of people from the land, which has even surpassed the target set in the economic development programme.
Once more I wish to be critical. I take the advice of the economists again with a large grain of salt. By and large, the science of economics is a very indefinite and very inexact one. At times we are inclined to give a kind of scientific credence to their figures which is not deserved at all. Look back to the past 20 years and tell us how often have the economists been right in this country? That is not criticising economists but criticising the science of economics and its present inadequate state of development. We should, therefore, be careful. If I am to bank on the future and look ahead, I see in that future not the Common Market—a type of a closed club within narrow boundaries. I see the world responding to a call to feed the hungry or perish. After all, Pope Paul has reiterated that call again and again. U Thant has called from the UN for a realistic involvement in feeding the hungry. This means that the better off people of the earth amongst whom we must rank very high, must give of their wealth to help their less fortunate brethren.
Surely a regional policy today should be concerned with the world as a whole? We are looking at the world as a whole, not merely concerned with making richer a little part of that world—this part now called Europe. Surely our horizons are far beyond that? Would somebody tell me who is mad in this talk about increased population and we unable to feed I think 300,000,000 people—I get lost in figures; it is some fabulous number? The population will have doubled in the next 40 years. Surely the presence of such a population calls for the fullest possible utilisation of the world's food resources? Surely that must mean that agriculture comes into its own? Surely it must mean that our agricultural potential can be tapped within that framework on a state which would be utterly impossible in the future? Either we accept that as a vision of the future or else we reject completely all this talk about the brotherhood of man and about concern for the underprivileged in the other continents. The two bob we give to a collection is not a measure of what the nations will have to give.
Indeed what I am advocating is only prudent self-defence. As soon as the United States gets out of its unfortunate involvement in Vietnam, I am certain that it will be spearheading a move to protect the world by removing the causes of injustice and oppression. This agricultural era will come. Therefore, if I am to put my money on anything, I am prepared to plan on that rather than on anything else being offered to us.
Looking at it in another way, we have much more than economics with which to concern ourselves. Indeed, it is a poor reflection on our country to say that, after our 700 years struggle, economics is the only criterion. I would go so far as to say that had a bunch of economists, at any time during that 700 years, given a blueprint for the future, it would have been integration with England. It would have been full development of the resources of our combined community, with a regional policy that would save the west. That is obvious.
Even though we may be called on to be more realist at this present stage, I hope we shall examine carefully the credentials of the group we see emerging. This group as it emerged in the fifties was highly attractive. It was dominated by the Christian Democrat philosophy. It had mighty statesmen of the calibre of de Gasperi, Schuman and Adenauer planning the future. It was outward looking. It was concerned with the peoples of the world. It was concerned, first of all, with preventing conflict within Europe. Secondly it was concerned with meeting the challenge from Russia on its eastern flank. These were real situations in the fifties. The tanks that rolled into Hungary could well have rolled right to the Channel. But ten years later, examine how that has changed, and changed very dramatically. Does anyone here today say that Russia poses a serious threat to Western Europe? I do not think anyone could hold that. Russia has her own troubles with China. There is also the fact that all Eastern Europe is held. At the least sign of Russia embarking on any aggression obviously the whole of Eastern Europe would go up in flames. Nobody takes it that at present Western Europe has to organise its own defence or perish.
Again the idealism of the fifties has been replaced by the pragmatic approach of the Social Democrats. It might be symbolised by Herr Willi Brandt of Germany. This approach has been completely inward-looking. Today there is very little emphasis on aid to the world outside The Six, or The Ten, or whatever it will be. In fact, the only concern that The Six have for the world outside is whenever they have a surplus. Then in violation of all their ideas of free trade and of fair trade, they dump that surplus on any market that pleases them and it is of no concern to them that the dumping crashes the market on the genuine suppliers to that region. That, to my mind, is not a healthy approach and I question it.
I suggest in the months ahead that we should look very coldly at how this Community is really emerging. Indeed, I sometimes smile when I hear the great reliance placed on the fact that we must get in, or that we can influence the Community in its structure, in its policies and all the rest of it. If I have taken Senator Ryan up correctly, we are going to have ten members out of an assembly of about 300, that is, one in 30. I am almost one in 30 in this assembly and I do not believe that I have had a tremendous influence on national policy. I do not delude myself into believing that I have had a tremendous influence on national policy just because I happen to be in this assembly, despite the fact that I have tried, and tried hard, to press for progressive schemes but the response has nearly always been the same: "Take your time; we cannot do that just now." I am afraid, I regret to say, that our position in Europe will be largely that, except that here we speak the one language. In Europe I do not feel our ten members of Parliament will be as fluent in the European languages as they should be even to exercise their rights or their weight as ten of the 300.
A more important objection is that this group is not basically a democratic group. It is a group that is basically governed by the Commission, because the Commission is a Civil Service in five languages. Goodness knows we have one in two languages and I shudder to think of what one in five languages would be like. There is genuine concern in Europe at the stranglehold the Commission has got. The Council of Ministers only consider what the Commission sends up to them. If the European Parliament pleads, it is like, the Opposition, in outer space. Again, that is something that is very dangerous. The main problem we face here at the moment is that we are a Civil Service-run State. We have difficulties in education. Fianna Fáil may replace the Minister for Education, Deputy Faulkner, by somebody else. The country may replace Fianna Fáil by a Fine Gael-Labour group but who will replace Mr. FitzGerald and who will replace Mr. O'Connor, and they are educational policy in this country? Unfortunately, it is going to be the same in the thinking of the Commission. Again, the links to the Commission will be links from the permanent Civil Service here. Politicians may come and go but the Civil Service will remain, and therefore the complete links to the Commission will be from Civil Service channels. Again, I query that. If the type of society we envisage for the future is not democratic but managerial, well it is not my type of society and I do not know whether it is really what we should look for in the future.
I should now like to speak on education. What is the view of Denmark on this? What are they telling their people about the advantages they see for their country in the Common Market? We could learn a lot from that. I have not got the answers but we are setting up a study group in UCC. We are just all questioning.
Why should you not get a chance?
At the end of this period when we look at that I, and I am sure all the others, will study it in the same way. We will look at it sincerely and honestly. Then, with the Minister, we will say: "There will be more joy in Heaven for the one sinner who repents than for the 99 just men who have swallowed the Common Market without looking at it." We intend to do what we can. In conclusion, I think I would lay odds of about four to one against England ever going in. These odds are lengthening every day.
I will take that.
Does the Senator remember when he spoke a few years ago of England as "the sick man of Europe"?
This is based on the many things which England will have to give up and also the present economic situation there which is not one that will admit of the imposition of the hardships, supposedly short-term, that will have to be imposed for England to get in. That will create a very new ball game and one, I hope, which will open up the world as a whole. I hope then it will be a question of getting together to feed the hungry and in that situation I feel our agriculture will come into its own and we will still retain our own limited sovereignty here to plan in our own way without dictation from Brussels, London or New York.
The first thing that occurs to me about the White Paper is that it is quite inadequate, and indeed incorrect, since it was compiled on the premise that it would be to the advantage of this country to go into the EEC and that, in fact, eventually we shall do so. It is beyond all doubt that, proceeding on that basis, and indeed on the instructions of the Government, the Civil Service, who prepared this White Paper, deliberately downgraded the disadvantages of entry. From the very beginning the Government proceeded in the wrong way completely. The Government made up their minds that it would be a good thing to go in and then, having decided that, proceeded to bolster up a case for entry. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, other sections of the community adopted a similar procedure. In other words, they decided first of all whether it would be a good thing to go in or to stay out, then they proceeded to make their case for or against, with the result that when new evidence is produced they are quite unable to depart from their original decision. Fortunately, however, the largest representative group in this country, because of lack of full consultation and lack of knowledge, are unable to make up their minds. I say fortunately, because I am referring to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions which represent 500,000 workers. Because of lack of adequate information being passed on by the Government to Congress and also because of lack of full consultation Congress have been unable to make up their minds about this vital matter and therefore they are unable to advise their aggregate membership of 500,000 people.
My own union, the largest in the country and which has 150,000 members employed in practically every industry and service throughout this country, are asked questions about the Common Market every day of the week and we are quite unable to answer them. I am referring to the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union. First of all, we are asked: "What about our jobs?" Secondly: "What about our wages? Will wages go up when we go into the Common Market?" Again, we cannot answer these questions with any degree of finality. They ask us: "Is it possible, if we go into the EEC, for foreign industrialists to come into this country, take advantage of the grant system through the IDA and then proceed to employ foreign workers in those industries?" None of these questions has been answered and there are many more. We are not in a position to answer them and I doubt very much if the Minister can answer them. He cannot answer them because all the facts are not in this document.
In relation to this absence of facts in this document there is an extraordinary statement on page 13 of the Report on the Progress of Negotiations. Under the heading "Likely Developments of the Negotiations" it is stated that:
The period since our negotiations opened can be regarded as essentially the fact finding stage.
I suggest that the fact finding stage was before we committed this country to entry. I suggest to the Minister and to the Government that the vast majority of our people have not been told the facts. They were probably not told these facts because the Government themselves do not know the facts. Even at this late stage, I suggest that the Government should set up an independent commission, representing all political parties and other outside interests, including the trade union movement. That commission should be sent for six months to Brussels, or to any of the six countries, so that they could ascertain all the facts.
Not alone do the trade union movement not know the facts, and are not able to make up their minds on this vital matter, but the farming community are in exactly the same position; professional people are in the same position; employers are in the same position. Every day of the week we are asked by employers to advise them if they should reconstruct their plants, restructure their industries, get in new machinery. They do not know what the future will hold for their plants and industries. The same applies in Britain.
I read recently that it has just been revealed that, since the EEC was set up in 1958, the EEC Commission has handed down some 40,000 decisions— most of them, admittedly, of a minor nature. The British Foreign Office have, to date, translated only 30,000 of those decisions. This means that there is no knowledge of 10,000 decisions made by the EEC Commission. In respect of the 30,000 that have been translated there is great doubt about the interpretation of most of them. In the interests of the community the Government should, even at this late stage, set up an impartial commission representing every interest in this country to try to ascertain all the facts and then let the people know them so that when the referendum takes place, they will vote on the facts and not on a purely political party basis. Furthermore, I would suggest to the Minister that all the vital interests in this country, not alone the Government but other political parties, the farming community and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, should not only be consulted in regard to the progress of the negotiations but they should be invited to participate in such negotiations.
The implications of being a citizen, or Government, of the European Community, bound by the Treaty of Rome are challenging. In the context of Ireland, and from the standpoint of the Fianna Fáil Party, they may well prove revolutionary, in my view, in the long term. For example, as a people who are accustomed to talk of emigration as a haemorrhage of our life's blood we will find it difficult to get used to the mobility of labour inside Ireland and Europe, which will be an inevitable part of the rest of this century, inside or outside the EEC. Think, too, of the shock the North of Ireland may get when Stormont find it impossible, under the Treaty of Rome, to restrict any movement of labour from the Republic northwards.
In the past year or so we have felt the domestic strain of pursuing, on the Border issue, a policy of pacifism and the resolution of political differences by negotiation. This is a policy which, in the international scene, we have been proud to pursue through the United Nations for years. As members of a European Community committed to the defence of that Community we will be in a power bloc where nine out of ten members belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. In this environment it will become all the more important that our well established approach to international affairs through the United Nations should be maintained.
The compatibility between the agricultural proposals of European Commissioner Dr. Sicco Mansholt and the fifth aim of Fianna Fáil, "to establish as many families as practicable on the land", depends on recognising that "practicable" should mean "as can enjoy a standard of living comparable to families living in urban areas". Entering the Community will mean many such agonising reappraisals for us all. Particularly for young people the logic of the future must surely lead to a clear "yes" for EEC entry in any referendum. Young people are for peace. not war. Young people are internationalists, not nationalists. As citizens of the global village created by today's educationalists and the mass media, they are for technological progress and effciency, provided it is democratically controlled and committed to the good for all. This commitment is enshrined in the preamble and principles of the Treaty of Rome. I will not delay by placing that preamble and those principles on the Official Report; Senator O'Higgins has summarised them and they may be found in the Official English Translation reprinted in 1962 of the Treaty of Rome, pages 13 to 21.
One probably cannot argue with the type of opponent of EEC entry who dismisses the preamble and principles as "pie in the sky" and who questions the bona fides of the present members of the Community towards those objectives. I can only assert that my reading of the history of the Community in the 13 years since its foundation is that it has fitfully but faithfully followed the objectives of the Treaty of Rome. It must also be recognised that the institutions set up under the Treaty, particularly the Commission and the Court of Justice, are bound to seek the carrying out of the Treaty obligations, and this in itself seems to me to be a fair guarantee of the future pattern of Europe.
No doubt there are some young people, particularly those with a socialist inclination, who are apprehensive about any treaty based, as Deputy Brendan Corish has put it, "on the principles of laissez faire and free competition”. When will Irish socialists realise that the attitudes and sloganising of the twenties and thirties are irrelevant today—that the socialism of J. K. Galbraith is different from the socialism of Karl Marx because the world today differs more every day from the world of 1916?
In Ireland we have accepted a mixed economy and accepted the existence of multi-national business corporations as a fact of life. It seems to me that the preamble's and the Treaty's commitment to improving the living and working conditions of peoples and the equalising of regional prosperity provides a working framework for socialist ideas in national governments and community institutions. This is certainly the view of the majority of political parties and trade unions in the EEC countries today. It cannot be stressed too often that the European Community is a community of democratic States accepting applications for membership from none but democratic States and engaged, itself, in the democratisation of its own institutions. This means that the future development of the Community is inevitably influenced by political developments in each European country.
The policy emphasis of an enlarged Community will change as, for example, the fortunes of Britain's Conservative Government or Germany's Social Democratic Government change. The scope for change, taking account of the various European governments, is enormous. Part of my own optimism about the future of Europe—and here is the difference between myself and Senator Quinlan—springs from my choice of scenario to the Europe of the late 20th century. In my view the flow of European thought will be to the left, will be towards neutrality in international affairs, and will slowly but surely be towards taking on, on a Community scale, the real evils of our time: poverty and pollution at home, and hunger and deprivation in the Third World.
Ireland's voice should play an honourable part in all these trends. If I am correct in the view that the future of the European Communities will be dictated by the political development of the member States and the growing democratisation of the Community institutions, the urgency of a greater appreciation by Irish people, political parties and legislators, of European politics is underlined. While, to a large extent, it remains with Seán Citizen and our political parties and Members of the Oireachtas to help themselves, this education process could be greatly assisted in a number of ways. I hope the news coverage of the Press, radio and television will continue to become more European oriented. I hope our schools and universities—I was glad to hear Senator Quinlan's good news— will pay special attention to the history, the culture and the social, economic and political development of Europe. I hope our libraries, including the Oireachtas Library, will recognise the need to build up their stock of contemporary European material. I am sorry to hear Senator Kennedy's pleas, because the trade unions can do a great deal from their own resources to make inquiries about the future of Europe, in close consultation with the European trade unions, and so on. I am surprised that they have not been able, from their resources and with their fellow trade unionists on the Continent, to get the answers to many of the types of questions he raised. I hope trade unions, professional institutes and parliamentarians will make more efforts to get to know their European counterparts and the framework in which they work.
There are two approaches to the discussion of the pros and cons of Irish entry into the EEC. First, in the vein in which I have been speaking so far, there is dispute about the future vision of Europe. This is a debate which, although it may appear a mere exchange of pious generalisations, is nevertheless extremely important. The ideas which change history are those which can be exchanged in one or two sentences. My vision is of an Ireland playing an integral part in a European Community with the collective strength to lead the world as well as its member States towards peace and prosperity. I am happy to let that vision stand against the Sinn Féin and Labour vision, as I understand it, of our relatively insignificant State standing alone and attempting, through its own resources, to offer its people a standard of living equivalent to the world around it, while admonishing that world for its involvement with big business and its disregard for the Third World.
The second type of discussion of the pros and cons of Irish entry to the EEC hangs on one's assessment of the detailed implications of membership, one's understanding of the technical details of the Treaty and the Community's directions and regulations, and one's estimates of the transitional arrangements for exceptional measures necessary to meet specific Irish problems. As a person who is neither an agriculturist, a fisherman, a businessman, or an industrialist, I am not in a good position to adjudicate on matters of this kind. It seems to me, however, that the Government's view is that we have no worthwhile alternative but to enter, and their approach to the membership negotiations is sound. I welcome the circulation by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Report on the Progress of Negotiations. Looking at the continuing negotiations all I wish to say is that it is extremely important that the documents and memoranda we submit should be of the quality and detailed thoroughness of the best academic research and that they should be backed as far as possible by full consultation with the domestic interests involved.
I would say to anyone who suspects that his interests may be affected in some important way by entry to the EEC that now is the time to inform yourself, now is the time to put your case to the Departments so that, if there is some difficulty that requires attention, it may be raised if necessary in the course of the negotiations. I may say that anyone I know who has followed this advice has been impressed by the assistance he received and I would stress that the White Paper on the implications for Ireland of entry, which we are discussing now, is a general introduction to the subject and not the last word.
When making any assessment of the implications of EEC entry it is important that people should realise that the Community, as Senator Ryan has pointed out, is a dynamic and evolving institution. It is more important that individuals and organisations should appreciate the working principles of the Community and its institutions than to assume that prices and trading conditions which Ireland would face as a member of the Community at the end of the five year transitional period would remain the same as they are now. The future of the Community's common agricultural policy, and the Community's new steps towards economic and monetary union are, for example, likely to be of greater import to agriculture and our economy than the immediate benefit of higher agricultural prices, or the threat of free competition to sensitive industries. Again, I am prepared to be optimistic about the future, because as yet I have to meet a problem on which we must stand alone. In fact, it is for me an attraction of the European Community that in any matter about which we are concerned—regional development or fisheries, for example— we shall almost certainly find a fellow pleader in at least one of the other member States of the enlarged Community and almost certainly in one of what will be the Community's Big Four: Britain, France, Germany and Italy.
My main apprehensions about the prospect of Irish entry to the EEC spring from my doubts about the preparedness of Irish industry for free competition and my fears that our national planning and, indeed, national attitudes towards planning, may not be as geared for entry as I would like. Appendix 3 of the White Paper outlines the measures taken, or in progress, to prepare industry for free trade conditions. My experience, which may not be representative, has been that there is widespread cynicism about the work of the CIO and all the other bodies and incentives which one finds detailed in the Appendix. Cynicism is a curse in this country; and I should like to urge management and employees alike to shake off any scepticism they may have about aid that may be available to them, or indeed any false assumption they may make that nothing is available to them. They will have only themselves to blame if they find themselves pinched by free trade having made little effort to adapt.
I welcome the reports issuing recently from the Committee for Industrial Progress. Any time I meet someone engaged in one of the industries covered by the report I make a point of inquiring whether he has heard of the report and noted the recommendations made in it. So far, I regret to say, I have always been answered in the negative. I suggest that management and labour should do more to help themselves and that further publicity should be given to the availability of these reports and other aids to adaptation.
An example of an area in which I have fears that our policy making is not sufficiently advanced to take full advantage of the developing community is regional planning. This is a point I already referred to in the debate on the Appropriation Bill, 1970, in Volume 69, No. 1, of the Official Report. I now welcome the assurance given by the Tánaiste, in the Dáil, last night and reported in today's Irish Press:
Our new regional planning machinery is expected to provide a basis for as detailed regional policy as any in Europe well before our entry into the Community. I hope that the proposals for north-south co-operation in this regard made by the Taoiseach at the recent Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis will also bear fruit.
Negotiations for our admission to the EEC have got under way because the heads of state or governments of the present six members of the Community decided to have a summit meeting in The Hague in December, 1969. I should like to quote from The Hague Declaration which is included as Appendix I of the White Paper, at page 112:
In so far as the applicant States accept the Treaties and their political finality, the decisions taken since the entry into force of the Treaties and the options made in the sphere of development, the Heads of State or Government have indicated their agreement to the opening of negotiations between the Community on the one hand and the applicant States on the other.
Therefore, those of us who accept the Government's decision to enter the negotiations have thereby accepted that the Treaty of Rome and all that it has led to is not negotiable. One must therefore be either for or against the Community and its objectives, whereas there is room for shades of opinion on whatever entry terms may be negotiated. Those terms will be placed before the Dáil, for approval, in due course. If the Parliament and people of Ireland endorse the entry terms negotiated by the Government we shall, in all probability, accede to the Treaties in 1973.
The Third Programme for Economic and Social Development is due to complete its term in 1972. I must confess I am beginning to sympathise with the many people who feel that economic and political developments have made this programme somewhat irrelevant. Indeed, part of this sense of irrelevance must stem from the context in which the programme was produced vis-á-vis the EEC. On page 15 of the Third Programme it says:
The choice of period, 1969 to 1972, was governed by a number of considerations, among them the fact that there was no longer any realistic prospect of Ireland becoming a member of the EEC in the immediate future. The changed circumstances made irrelevant some of the assumption on which the Second Proramme was founded.
Again, we see how quickly times change. I should like to end by suggesting that if we accede to the EEC the country would be well served by a programme of economic and social development specifically geared to make the most of the transitional period negotiated. If we decide to join the die will be cast and surely then the whole community will be prepared to respond to the challenge of change and progress in the modern world of which it has fought shy for so long in so many ways.
I am not about to give the House a lecture on economics or agriculture because they are two subjects about which I know little. Nor do I want to range widely over the larger implications of our application to join the European Economic Community. I want to make two points of a specialised kind which have not yet been made and which, perhaps, this debate might otherwise terminate leaving untouched.
The first is a professional question to which the attention of the House ought be drawn. If this country joins an enlarged economic community it will mean increased contact between various professions here and the corresponding professions abroad. That will not cause any great difficulties other than linguistic difficulties in a large number of these professions. The medical profession here has common terms of reference with the medical profession abroad; they can understand each other. Given the linguistic difficulties, they talk about the same pathological conditions, the same drugs, the same forms of treatment, and so on. Analogous words could be used of the engineering profession. But that is not the case with the legal profession. Although I know that lawyers enjoy very small consideration within the community as a whole—I am conscious of the legend that my party contains more lawyers than Fianna Fáil, although a simple head count will reveal the opposite—I feel I must say something about the difficulties which the legal profession here will face if we are admitted to the European Economic Community.
Our profession consists, roughly, of 2,000 members, most of them general practitioners in the way that a country doctor is a general practitioner, and not many of them are specialised in company or contract work which would involve them in correspondence with their colleagues abroad. That situation is certain to change, if I understand anything about the EEC, quite quickly and the profession must be ready to talk on equal terms with lawyers who have been brought up in an entirely different way, trained according to a different system and using a codified law with a completely different historical background, base, structure and pattern from that which we are used to in this country. Our system, whether we like it or not, is basically English.
The people in this country who are responsible for legal education do not often come into the public eye. Perhaps for that reason they have not felt a sense of urgency about this matter. It is an urgent matter because the number of lawyers in this country who understand the first thing about a continental legal system, let alone the jurisprudence which is being rapidly built up by the judicial institution of the European Community itself, is very, very small. In the law faculty in UCD—I hope the House will allow me to give myself credit where credit is due—we foresaw this problem about three or four years ago and we set up a course leading to a diploma in European law. I will not make exaggerated claims for that diploma; I regard it as a rock-bottom diploma but it is the best we could do in the circumstances because of the severe staffing difficulties which every law school in Ireland experiences and which is also experienced by faculties other than law faculties. I know that a course in European law is provided also in University College, Cork. I do not want to do an injustice to Trinity College—Trinity College has a distinguished representative here who can contradict me if I am wrong—but I do not think any specialised teaching of this kind has, as yet, begun there. The Law School in UCD is by far the biggest law school in the country and we recognise that we have a special responsibility in this regard.
We have done our best to make this diploma course useful. We provide course in comparative law which are intended to introduce students to the legal systems of the major continental countries. We also provide a course in European institutions which is intended to introduce graduate lawyers to the legal institutions and the governmental institutions of the Community itself, and a course in the conflict of laws or private international law. I have already described it as a rock-bottom course, but I hope we will be able to improve it, according as our facilities improve. The reason why I mentioned that course here is not simply to advertise our own exertions—although I believe we are entitled to some credit for them and we do not often get such credit—but because we deliberately and consciously recognised it as a national need.
University College, Dublin, like all the university and educational establishments in this country is fighting a battle against shortage of facilities and shortage of funds. I do not criticise the Government for that. This is a small country and we have—as Ministers are always saying—to cut our cloth according to our measure. For anything which happened in the years 1948 to 1951 and 1954 to 1957, of course, that excuse is not accepted, but in any other years, since I was a baby six months old, it has been a question of "cutting one's cloth according to one's measure" or having to "roll with the punch" or having to "suffer the deleterious effects of external influences over which we have no control", and so on. I recognise that these are valid excuses. My complaint is that they are not accepted for both sides.
The money available to university law schools is limited but the number of students who prepare themselves for the professional difficulty they are going to find themselves in, in this enlarged community, if we join it, has been pretty small. We have a large drop-out rate during the year because the going is tough. It has to be a night course, because these are all people who have already graduated and are practising as barristers or solicitors and it is not easy to spend two hours three nights per week in a university classroom when one is tired after a day's work.
That is part of the reason for the drop-out. But another reason why we do not get enough students for this is that they are deterred by the fact that we have to charge a fairly stiff fee of £50 or maybe £60 for the year. I urge the Minister to bear in mind that we are doing this not for purely academic reasons, and we would not contend that the academic content of this diploma is very high. We are doing it out of a sense of national responsibility, and we are having to find the money for this course out of a very limited budget. The money we provide to pay staff or buy books in order to prepare the legal profession for the challenge we are always hearing about, means that much less money for the job which the university, on one view of what a university is there for, ought to be doing. The Minister might ask his officials to consider whether some help might be given to this course, and to any other university law school which begins such a course, by way of grants to meet the cost of students' fees, or by way of scholarships to enable lawyers to travel to Europe and to familiarise themselves at first hand with some of the European institutions.
Mar mhalairt ar an ghná-scéal ba mhaith liom críochnú i nGaeilge i leaba tosnú le Gaeilge agus cúpla focal a rá mar gheall ar staid na teanga i dtaca leis an gCómhargadh. Faoi mar is eol do gach Seanadóir, aithnítear ceithre teangacha oifigiúla sa gCómhargadh, eadhon, an Fhraincis, an Ghearmáinis, an Iodáilis agus an Ollannais nó b'fhéidir gur cóir teanga na nÍsiltír a thabhairt uirthi. Ach is dócha go n-áireofar an Béarla orthu má ligtear Sasana isteach sa Chómhargadh gan trácht ar an Danmhairgis agus ar an Ioruais. Ach go dtí seo focal níor chuala mé faoi stáid na Gaeilge má ligtear muidne isteach. Bhí an méid seo le rá ag an Aire 21 Samhain, 1970:
We wish to participate in the study of any technical adaptations which might have to be made to Community regulations to take account of the enlargement of the Communities and also in the preparation of the English language texts of the Treaties and of Community legislation.
Ní mise a mholfadh don Rialtas airgead a chailliúint ar chúrsaí aistriúcháin agus ar chúrsaí ullmhúcháin in aisce. Ach is í an Ghaeilge an phríomhtheanga oifigiúil i bhfus, gidh go ndeireann an Bunreacht in Alt a 8:
Ach féadfar socrú a dhéanamh le dlí d'fhonn ceachtar den dá teanga sin a bheith ina haonteanga le haghaidh aon ghnó nó gnóthaí oifigiúla ar fud an Stáit ar fad nó in aon chuid de.
Gidh go bhfuil sé dleathach go leoz an t-aon leagan amháin, an Béarla, a bheith ar Chonradh na Róimhe níor chóir dúinn bheith in dtuilleamaí leis an leagan Béarla amháin. Caithfidh an tAire féachaint chuige le go mbeidh leagan Gaeilge ann chomh maith agus feidhm dlí leis an leagan céanna. Ní bhíonn feidhm dlí leis na haistriúcháin a dhéantar ar gach ionstraim reachtúil i bhfus. Níl feidhm dlí de shaghas ar bith ag baint leis an gcuid is mó acu. Caithfidh leagan Gaeilge a bheith againn a mbeidh feidhm dlí ag baint leis. Sin é an rud is lú is féidir linn a dhéanamh le haghaidh gradam na Gaeilge a chaomhnú i gcomhthéacs an Chómhargaidh.
Ní mór an meas atá agamsa ar dhíograis nó ar dháiríreacht an Rialtais i dtaca leis an Ghaeilge dhe. Ní ag maslú Seanadóirí atá mé—go háirithe Seanadóirí ar nós an Seanadóir Ó Maoláin agus an Seanadóir Brugha, daoine gur cás leo an Ghaeilge. Ach is dóigh liom gur cuma le Fianna Fáil, mar phairtí, an Ghaeilge a bheith beo nó marbh.
Le caoga bliain anuas foilsíodh leaganacha Gaeilge de Achtanna an Oireachtais agus ionstraimí reachtúla eile le cabhair airgead poiblí agus níor baineadh úsáid ar bith astu agus níor léigh duine ar bith iad. San am gcéanna tá téacsleabhair scoile i nGaeilge de dhíth. Is cruthú é sin domsa ar aon nós gur cuma leis an Rialtas an teanga bheith beo nó marbh. Dá bhrí sin, táim ag iarraidh ar an Aire féachaint chuige nach bhfágfar an Ghaeilge ar lár i gcomhthéacs an Chómhargaidh agus go mbeidh leagan Gaeilge den Chonradh againn a mbeidh feidhm dlí leis. Rud eile, tá súil agam go mbeidh sé ar chumas chuile Éireannaigh gur cás leis an teanga gach gnó a bhaineann leis an gCómhargadh a dhéanamh i bhfus in Éirinn tré Ghaeilge más mian leis é.
Ba mhaith liom fáilte a chur roimh an Aire Gnóthaí Eachtracha. Is dóigh liom gurb é seo an chéad uair sa tSeanaid dó. Tuigtear dom gur aistríodh teideal Bhéarla na Roinne.
I should like to welcome the Minister. I think this is the first time I have seen him in the Seanad.
Measaim go bhfuil an ceart ag an Seanadóir Ó Ceallaigh i dtaobh na Gaeilge sa chás seo. Má táimíd dáiríre i dtaobh ár dteanga féin ba cheart go mbeadh na téacsanna a bhaineas leis an gCómhargadh le fáil acu súd a dteastaíonn siad uathu i nGaeilge.
This is the first opportunity we have had in this House to discuss the question of the European Economic Community and the possible implications involved if we become members thereof. The Treaty of Rome, as Members know, arose out of discussions over a number of years between European nations following the signing of the Coal and Steel Agreement. In my view the Treaty is one of the most important developments in history. I am satisfied, having studied it, that the philosophy underlying it, which led to the setting up of the European Economic Community, is fundamentally Christian in its thinking although this is not expressed in actual words. It is a charter which has heralded the end of centuries of civil war in Europe. These were wars in which many thousands of people lost their lives, particularly during the last two Great Wars. Many Irishmen lost their lives earlier on, on the side of European nations against Britain and, in later years, on the side of Britain and France against another European nation. The ultimate long-term implications—and they are very long-term—are part of an evolutionary process which will embrace all European nations as they come together.
The aspect of this that I should like to talk about is not only on the question of milk and beef referred to by Senator Quinlan, but rather on the underlying philosophy—arriving at a conclusion of what is best from a philosophical point of view and also from the point of view of our country. First of all, one should refer to our own historical association with Europe. Although we are not attached to Europe, Ireland is largely a European nation. We cannot regard ourselves as Asian, African or American. Throughout our history, when it was permitted, we have had links directly with Europe, not only in the Middle Ages but right through the long periods of occupation when we looked towards Europe for moral, and sometimes military, aid in our efforts to free ourselves. We also derived from Europe considerable cultural and educational benefit which came to us directly from some of the centres of European education. There was a time in our history when the only learning that Irish children received was in the hedge schools where, knowing no English, they learned to speak Latin fluently.
As long as those links with the Continent were maintained we were at least helped to retain a hope of freeing ourselves. It was only at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when our neighbour succeeded in putting through the Act of Union, that we were finally cut off from Europe. However, that is in the past and it is not my wish to indulge in any recriminations. It can be shown that, to a considerable extent, our survival and salvation as a nation can be greatly strengthened by reestablishing our links with the European nations.
In this situation, which has been developing for some years, we are approaching a crossroads. When we arrive at that crossroads we have to decide what direction to take, because the opportunity is not likely to arise again. There is naturally a considerable degree of anxiety and uncertainty in trying to determine where the results of our decisions may lead us. It is not possible to determine everything in advance. A person who puts everything he can into the setting up of an industry cannot answer the question of where it will be in five or ten years time. There must be a little confidence, enterprise and hope that one is doing what is best.
On the philosophical side there are a number of questions with which I should like to deal. One of them has already been mentioned, the question of sovereignty. This is a word which has a special meaning to many people in Ireland. It is a word to which we are particularly sensitive because it evokes in many of us memories of the tremendous efforts and sacrifices made in the past in order to secure freedom and the right to determine our own future. Here, there is a difference in our thinking and how this word has an impact on us as compared with the more pragmatic approach of nations like the Belgians, the Dutch and the French. Where we were deprived for many centuries of any right to determine our own destinies, these nations —two or three of them—in these centuries were on a couple of occasions deprived of all rights almost overnight. Perhaps, in those circumstances, it was easier for them to decide on this question of sovereignty than it is for us. However, I interpret the question of sovereignty as our having the right to take decisions for and on behalf of the people, decisions that we believe will be in Ireland's best interest, that we should be able to take those decisions, not at the behest of any authority whatsoever except our own elected authority.
The other questions to which I should like to refer, and which are causing some unease, relate to the division of our country and to what is known as NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. In relation to NATO one must try to bear in mind that this organisation, which was established during the last war, was really continued only because Europe, as we knew it after 1945, was in need of protection from another super power. In the context of a developing and a strengthening Europe I would see institutions such as NATO becoming anachronisms. and what is important is that we should have in due course a Europe which will not need to be protected by any super power but which will be in a position to take its own decisions and, one would hope, to influence the world situation for good as a strong community of nations.
On the question of the division of our country, we here represent three-quarters of the people. We have, I believe, the right to take a decision. I do not think that we have the right to postpone such a decision, if we believe it to be the right one, merely because our country is divided. The decision that we should take in relation to the European Economic Community should be the sort of decision that we would take if we had a united country. I also believe, in the context of the European Economic Community, that our influence should have been felt earlier on, and that it certainly should be felt on the Council of Ministers in the formative decisions that will be made over the next five to ten years in relation to Europe.
I do not believe that in the context of the evolving situation we have a right to remain isolated and so deprive Europe of whatever good influence we may, through our representatives, be able to bring to bear in the councils of the European Community. I might add perhaps that I am quite sure that an Irish Minister on the Council of Ministers would be far more concerned about the regional situation as it may relate to the North of Ireland than any other Minister would be.
Another sensitive question which has been raised from time to time refers to the supposed danger to our culture and identity. Some people have expressed the opinion that we are in danger of losing our identity entirely and that our culture may be obliterated. I feel that this is a rather frightened and lonely outlook. It is the outlook of people who have not got real confidence in the future of the nation. I believe that once we come in close contact with other peoples—something that we have not been accustomed to for many centuries—who as a matter of course accept that they have an identity, a culture and a language of their own, we will find that our own people will begin to appreciate what is best in our own traditions here and will feel the need to strengthen identity.
There are many problems that we will be discussing around and about the country over the next 12 months which are important and will be part of the negotiations. There are questions which have been mentioned here regarding the movement of workers. Some questions which have not been mentioned, but which are of considerable importance to us, are being discussed at the present time in relation to our fishing industry. There is also, one would hope, the progress that we should be able to make in the negotiations in regard to a balanced development of regional areas such as we have in the west and in the north-west.
I feel that overall we, as a people, should have the courage to go forward into what may seem to some people to be the bearna baol. I believe that we have proved in recent times here and elsewhere in the world that we, as a people, have the capacity to adapt ourselves and to meet challenges, even the challenge of modern conditions of change and stress. I believe that we have got the courage and the ability to make a success of our life in Ireland and as a part of the European Community. I would see if this develops— and there is no certainty as to the outcome of negotiations—that we should be able to exercise a quite significant influence, an influence out of proportion to our size, in the affairs of Europe and through that to influence for good the contribution which Europe should be able to make to that larger section of people who are less privileged in the world.
I find that the difference between debating this motion in the Seanad—and may I say that I am very glad we are doing so—and debating it in the Dáil is that in the Dáil one has anything up to three hours and one can go off into spiritual pastures. With only 20 minutes at my disposal, I do not propose to follow Deputy Oliver Flanagan into his pastures. I will instead confine myself to the only area on which I have any possible qualification to speak and that is to the constitutional and local implications of the Common Market. In doing this, I must necessarily express disappointment at the way in which this is treated in the White Paper which we are discussing. The constitutional and legal implications were treated in three pages in a very vague way. With the Minister present, I should like to stress the importance of not overlooking the constitutional and legal implications.
I will take first the legal implications because I think many people have adverted to the constitutional position and the importance of studying this but there are also other legal implications. Senator Kelly referred to the position of the legal profession. In this respect the profession itself is aware and is negotiating with the liaison committee in Brussels with a view to stating the case for the legal profession. Apart from that, the White Paper states that:
The Attorney General's committee is examining with the individual Departments the changes which would be required in our domestic laws in order to adapt them to the provisions of the Treaties and action taken in implementation of these provisions.
I would submit to the Minister this is not at all an adequate procedure. The one major area of great change and of great significance in the area of legal implications will be the fact that in signing the Treaty of Rome, if we do, and accepting the implications of the European Economic Community, we will sign as part of the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments. This will substantially change the conflict of laws in operation in Ireland at the moment in the enforcement of foreign judgments. It enlarges the area of jurisdiction and it will have immediate impact on any law with a foreign element in private international law in Ireland. I do not think this has been sufficiently adverted to.
Similarly, I think there are grave implications for the courts themselves in the decision to join the European Economic Community. In relation to the workload in the courts at the moment, under the Constitution, Article 34, the Supreme Court has the final decision in any matters, whereas when we join Europe there will be the requirement under Article 177 that, if a matter of interpretation of the Treaty comes up, the Supreme Court must, and the High Court or a lower court may, refer any matter of Treaty interpretation to the European Court.
This cannot happen automatically. There is no procedure for this. This is a matter we must study and we must look into the implications of this. I would call on the Minister not to leave such important long-term implications merely to the Attorney General's interdepartmental committee of civil servants. I would ask him—and this has been suggested by others—to set up an independent commission comprised of judges, lawyers and experts on the Common Market, to look into legal implications and the implications for the various laws, and particularly the private law implications. This is extremely important.
Regarding the constitutional implications, here I should like, as other Senators have done, to begin by mentioning the concept of sovereignty. I would not agree with the statement on page 2 of the White Paper which says:
Among the provisions of the Constitution which have to be considered in this regard are:
(i) Article 5 which states that Ireland is a sovereign, independent, democratic state;.
I do not believe that this will undergo any particular change because the concept of sovereignty is a legal concept which does not have a fixed content. I agree with Senator Ryan that it is an elastic concept, that a sovereignty can be shared, that any country which participates in any charter or agreement, such as the Charter of the United Nations or the Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, gives up a certain amount of sovereignty. Any country that joins GATT gives up economic sovereignty in some sense, so that in talking of sovereignty we are not talking of a fixed concept.
I am certain that each of the six countries which at present comprise the Common Market would state that they were sovereign, independent, democratic States. This is not one of the matters which need be taken into account in speaking of the constitutional aspects. It is important to realise, when talking about sovereignty in the Republic of Ireland in contrast to the situation both in North of Ireland and in Britain, the significance of the fact that for us sovereignty can be reduced to the concept that we will need a constitutional referendum and therefore that the people will have a vote as to whether we go into the Common Market or not.
The terms of the Treaty of Rome and the other treaties do not square with the Constitution of 1937. The reason for this is obvious. The 1937 Constitution was drawn up without any thought of Ireland participating in an international organisation such as the European Community. The distribution of organs of government is tightly drafted in the 1937 Constitution without any idea that this would be shared with a supranational authority, without any idea that the exclusive jurisdiction in legislative matters would not be with this body of the Oireachtas, that the exclusive jurisdiction in executive matters would not be with the Government and that exclusive jurisdiction in judicial matters would not rest with the courts.
The real meaning of sovereignty, in so far as the Republic is concerned in this area, is the fact that this sharing of the sovereignty of the country can only be undergone with the acquiescence of the people themselves.
I should like to join with other Senators in taking issue to some extent with the Government in the way they are projecting the whole question of the Common Market. It is much more than joining an economic community; it is a fundamental constitutional change. From my recent travels to Galway, Cork and, to some extent, the midlands, I feel that the Government are failing to explain to the people exactly what is involved in the Common Market. I do not mean an indoctrination or a propaganda campaign of a slanted nature giving only the advantages. The result of this failure to communicate is that the people are turning more and more against the Common Market because they do not understand the implications of it and their natural instinct is to say "No". This may be an increasingly dangerous climate of opinion of which the Government should be aware.
Considering the amount of detailed and intensive explanations that went into the transfer to the decimal system by the use of television, the use of newspapers, the attempt to explain, in very simple terms, to the man in the street exactly what was involved in this other complex change, why has the same approach not been taken in relation to the Common Market?
It is necessary to explain—first of all, perhaps, to ascertain—what are the problems. We have heard some of them today. What are the problems in the agricultural area? What is the problem as far as industry is concerned? What are the problems as far as the trade unions are concerned? What are the questions they are asking? These must be ascertained and must be answered in a fair way by presenting both the advantages and the disadvantages of the position. If this is not done the people will realise that they are not getting a real choice because they do not know upon what issues they are voting. They would be more inclined to say "No" than "Yes" unless the timing of the referendum makes it impossible for them to have a fair vote on the issue.
I urge the Minister to set up an independent commission on the legal implications of the Common Market, particularly this Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments. I would emphasise the need for an entirely new explanation of the idea of the Common Market to the Irish people if there will be the possibility of having a real choice on it and if the question of sovereignty will have any real meaning.
Another point I should like to make is that the debate on the Common Market to date has tended to be too narrow. It has tended to deal with the economic aspects of it in relation to agriculture and to industry. Yet, it is quite evident that the Europeans themselves who are involved in the Common Market think less and less of the economic implications and more and more of the wider political implications. These must be faced by Ireland if we are seriously considering joining.
I should like to refer to a passage from the address of the President of the Commission, Signor Franco Mario Malfatti, to the European Parliament on the 10th February. On page six of this report he said:
1971 will be a year of fundamental importance in the life of our Community. Today we must realise that we are faced with an objectively different situation. There is an external political situation driving us faster and faster towards political awareness of our responsibility as a unit at world level. What significance can otherwise be attributed to current negotiations with the United Kingdom and the other countries that have applied for membership in order to build up a ten nation Community? Does the aim we have set ourselves not perhaps signify an important political contribution towards the better balance of forces in the world? Is it not an event pregnant with significance for the future of the Community? In this connection I have the impression that in face of difficulties still ahead of us in negotiation we are not paying sufficient attention to what has already been achieved and this is important if the Community's nature and its development as an enlarged Community are to be ensured.
In other words, the President of the Commission was stressing to the European Parliament the political role, as he conceived it, of the European Community.
Senator Ruairí Brugha has referred to the possible implications of NATO and the possible implications of our defence commitment. This is another subject like the question of sovereignty. Neutrality, if we have a policy on it— and I have yet to hear a coherently argued Irish policy on neutrality—is not an issue that can be avoided by saying nothing. It would be much stronger to have a genuine policy on neutrality, to state it now, and to state it as part of our commitment to the development of the European Community. This is a matter which should not be neglected. We should know what the intention of the Government is in this area.
It is like their policy on the North of Ireland: one thing for home consumption and something else for abroad.
It is a pity you drink so much vinegar. You would be quite good otherwise.
The final point I should like to make is in relation to the cultural and social implications of the Common Market. These will be very significant in Irish life. One of the places where this must start is in the schools. The apparently operative date of the first phase of the Common Market for us, if we join under the present terms, will be 1st January, 1973, which is less than two years away. Is there any attempt to educate in the schools, with a view to creating a new awareness by young students that they are growing up in a European country, that they are going to take part in the development of Europe in a much more integrated way than they could have conceived before?
Is there any attempt to teach living languages in the schools? I was very disappointed recently to find that the oral examinations in foreign languages are not to be carried out this year. I think that is a backward step. Foreign languages should be taught as they are spoken, not in a book sense. They must be spoken languages and it is essential for this purpose that there be an oral examination and that this be adhered to by the Department in the examination system. Much more so, there is a necessity to encourage young people to travel. I agree with Professor Kelly that this should be subsidised to an extent until we have a pool of fluent young people speaking various languages, having a feeling of being Europeans and a feeling that we can participate more fully in the wider real sense in the European Economic Community.
Just as a final word, the Government will do themselves an injustice if they confine themselves merely to economic arguments in relation to the Community. These are extremely important but they are only one aspect of this question of not simply joining a European economic community but of joining a new political and social entity and taking our place as a European state.
What has come very much to the fore in this is the fact that Members do not just want to make speeches but all the contributions are laced with questions. This is really what the people throughout the country want. The problem with the EEC is that it has been hanging over us for the past ten years. People have been reading and hearing various pieces on it. Yet I do not think people have got down to understanding what it is all about or how their own particular station in life will be affected. The present Minister for Foreign Affairs, and indeed the Government, must bear the responsibility of ensuring that the public at large know, and that the various sectors of the community know, what is in store for them, should we join.
It is most important that people in industry, and workers generally, should be given a better idea of what conditions are like in the EEC countries and of the type of competition that they must face. If we are to compete we must be prepared to work more or less to the same extent as people in the EEC countries. For instance, we have the example of the hours people work in Germany and other highly industrialised countries. Are those people all working a 40-hour week and are labour relations much the same? This is important. If we go in we do not want to suffer any redundancies in any industry. It is time that the country geared itself for this.
I cannot say whether industries in this country are geared for entry into the EEC. I do not know whether the workers in industry are geared for entry into the EEC. As a farmer, I can say that the farmers are not geared for entry into the EEC. It would appear that the policies of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries are partly at cross purposes with the agricultural policies laid down in the Mansholt Plan.
It is very significant that the first time we heard of Mansholt and the first time his plan was discussed a different slant was given to his theory. Whether his theory has been watered down or whether he has had second thoughts, I do not know. So far nothing has been done on the question of the larger units. For instance, have the Irish Land Commission taken cognisance of the possibility of our going into Europe in the next couple of years or so? There has been no change in this very important section of the Department of Lands. If the policy is for larger units, then the Land Commission should be setting about increasing the size of farm units, or at least maintaining a greater number of larger farms throughout the country rather than breaking down the estates into farms which are too small. Again, it is worthy of note that even in the last couple of years the Land Commission have not increased their average size of their holding. They still talk of an economic holding as a holding of 50 acres. I do not know whether this will stand in the larger Europe framework or not.
Then we have the questions of quota restrictions. We will be restricted to producing certain acreages of any of the catch crops that our farmers have been producing over the years. It stands to reason, therefore, that we should be endeavouring to increase the acreages of the crops that would be the hardest to compete with. Yet the fact remains that the price of beet remains the same to our Irish farmers for the second year running, notwithstanding the fact that production costs have gone up substantially last year and this year. Even with the increase in the acreage of beet made available to farmers this year, if we were under EEC conditions the production of sugar in this country this year, taking the yield as being average, would not be able to cater for this island as a whole. I think I am correct in saying this would be regrettable, because if the French sugar producers were able to get even a foothold into the northern market, it would not cost them that much to send in some extra in order to compete with home production.
We all know that cattle constitute the greatest share of our agricultural exports. Yet you have Government policy, this year and last year, designed to reduce the numbers of cows, to reduce the amount of milk. This has brought about the result in the milk areas in the south that people have turned away from milk production and this, in turn, will cause a reduction in the number of such calves available in the midlands. This must have, next year, a direct bearing on the numbers of store cattle and fat cattle we will have for export.
The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries should have had second thoughts before he threw the dairying industry into reverse gear. I know the Minister claimed recently that there was an increase of 5,000,000 gallons in milk last year, whereas before that Bord Bainne, who are charged with looking after milk production and the export of milk products, claimed that the production of milk last year was down by 12,000,000 gallons last year.
An Leas-Cathaoirleach
I hesitate to intervene here but I should like to remind the Senator of the good resolution he declared on the Order of Business of not going into detail on agricultural matters in view of the fact that Motion No. 10 will be taken in the near future. It is quite in order to discuss broad aspects of agricultural policy, such as are summarised in the document which we are debating at the moment, but I feel, having listened to the Senator, that he is perhaps going into detail which would be more appropriate on Motion No. 10.
I quite agree. I mentioned that at the beginning, thinking that everybody else would do likewise. People have availed of the opportunity of mentioning agriculture because the main benefit to be gained from our entry into the EEC is said to be agriculture. We are told that the farmers will gain from our entry and yet we are not told exactly what they will gain. Even in a full debate on agriculture it would be rather difficult to cover all the aspects of farming in 20 minutes. However, I am endeavouring to get rid of this one grievance which seems to be the thorn in the side of the farmers at the present time.
The main question facing us is whether we should enter the EEC but there is also the question of the choice between full membership and associate membership. Whatever disadvantages may be involved, in the initial stages, if we become full members, the disadvantages of associate membership would be far greater. Were we to become associate members, with no voting rights, no opportunity of influencing decisions and no voice in policy formulation or policy review, we would get a very bad bargain.
The case for membership of the Community does not rest merely on the argument that we have no alternative. The objectives of the EEC are objectives which we, as a nation, would wish to play a full part in achieving. We would all like to see the objectives laid down by the EEC, in the book that we are now discussing, achieved. Our main problem is that we all cannot see these objectives being achieved without some of our people being adversely affected. I cannot imagine any person, who has experience or knowledge of this country's policies of self-sufficiency, as experienced in the rural areas in the 1930s and 1940s, wishing to remain outside a larger, more powerful and more influential community. This will be a very strong factor in influencing members of the farming community to opt for the greater scope and larger markets that will be offered in EEC conditions.
Now that we have the Minister here, I should like to ask him, should our country accept the Treaty of Rome in full, must we also become members of the European Coal and Steel Community and EURATOM. What advantages will accrue to us from becoming members of these communities? Another very pertinent question is the case of membership. What will our financial contributions be to these various bodies and commissions?
Our application to join the Common Market should not merely be for economic or political considerations. The history and culture of Europe, I feel, should be looked upon as the birthright of us all. All European countries have contributed to it and we should all share in it. Our application, therefore, should be looked upon as flowing from a historical development of our continent and from the sentiments which we, as Europeans, all share.
Business suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.
The booklet Membership of the European Communities: Implications for Ireland published last year, has been a valuable asset to the people who have studied it. However, it puts questions into a person's mind, rather than answers. We had here this week the Minister for Transport and Power with the Transport (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill and I took the opportunity of asking him if he was doing anything to provide for competitive transport when we go into the EEC. He replied that this was something which did not come under his Department. I should like to remind the Minister and the Government that we are the outpost of Europe and we will not be able to compete with transport costs. I hope that CIE or their competitors, the progressive licensed hauliers, will be enable to equip themselves with the same type of transport as is used on the Continent for trading purposes.
This is very important especially if we are considering the export of lamb to the Continent, and lamb could be a good export commodity. The transport costs will have to be slashed and since the continental type freezer containers are not manufactured here, they should be allowed in duty free in order that our hauliers can equip themselves to compete effectively and efficiently and as cheaply as possible. The haul from our meat factories or from our farms will be the furthest away from the markets to which we propose to sell in Europe. Therefore, the transport section of our industry should get reasonable concessions and sufficient help to equip them for the tremendous task they will have to face.
In this booklet is a chapter on tax provisions. I should like if the Minister would explain the position of this country vis-à-vis the rates. In Europe there are no rates on land and, though I know there is a commission looking into this problem, I should like to know if we will go into the EEC equal with our European counterparts and that we will not have to suffer the ridiculous rating system that exists throughout the counties. If there are changes to be made in this, they would need to be made well in advance. We should not leave all these major changes until the last few months before our accession. I should like to quote a prediction from the Genuine Irish Old Moore's Almanac for 1971.
I did not know it still exists.
It states:
A bombshell announcement from Britain concerning the Common Market which will affect Ireland.
With Ireland as a member of an enlarged EEC, we will have a say and a vote in a Europe which will be enabled to play a greater role in terms of power and influence and to contribute in a greater measure not only to the development of her own potential but to that of the world as a whole. We have the opportunity to take this progressive step now towards this unity and the Government must convince the people that it is the right step. The way to do that is to put all the answers clearly before the people so that nobody will be misled in regard to the difficulties and challenges which may face us.
I agreed with Senators O'Higgins and Russell when they proposed and seconded this motion and indicated that we should join the European Economic Community if we have a chance to do so. We should not stand on the sidelines at this time. Our civilisation and traditions would make such an attitude quite unworthy of us. There are difficult problems for Western Europe at present and we should do our best to help to try to solve these problems. We made our contributions in the past and have shown that our contribution need not be small in relation to our size as a nation. We were in the League of Nations in the days before the war and we remember, with some pride, the part we played in that assembly. At the present time, we play a similarly worthy role in the World Health Organisation which has its headquarters in Geneva.
I am rather less clear about our position vis-à-vis the entry of the UK. Senator O'Higgins held the view that the entry of the UK should not influence our attitude one way or another. I am not satisfied that we can adopt such a completely independent attitude. I should like to hear the Minister, when he speaks in this debate, deal with this problem. If the UK does not join the Common Market, should we join it independantly? If the UK does join, everyone is agreed that we should also join. I agree with Senator Eoin Ryan that the alternative of not joining the Community would be very serious indeed for us. As Senator McDonald has just said, I have always felt that the larger the unit these days, the more important it is from the point of view of its all-round functioning. The smaller units remaining in isolation get themselves into a less and less favourable situation. We should avoid getting into that situation ourselves.
Senator O'Higgins mentioned the theory that some people have that we may lose our identity. I do not regard that as a danger which is necessarily very serious for us. We have many examples of small units that have joined up with larger ones and have succeeded in preserving their identity. I shall mention only one, Scotland. It is 370 years since Scotland came to share the same monarch as England and it is 270 years since they came to share the same parliament. I do not think that anybody would have much difficulty in distinguishing an Englishman from a Scot, even today, 300 years later.
I should like to refer to some particular points which have worried me and certain other members of various professions in this country and in England. Professions are in a rather special position. The White Paper refers to the necessity for allowing freedom of movement of workers as between the various countries in the Community. It mentions certain types of workers but they are almost entirely involved in industrial occupations, at specialist or less specialised levels. I could not see any reference to the professions and it is to them that I wish to refer particularly.
During the last 200 years a great amount of effort has gone into designing a system for the proper education and development of medical practice. This has been primarily designed entirely for the protection of the public, although many members of the public think it was primarily designed to protect the doctors. Medicine is the first profession that had this sort of control. Other professions followed and this kind of thing now extends through the range of all the sections of engineering, through various sections of science, of dentistry, where everything is controlled by supervisory bodies. Usually we have our own bodies here in Ireland but they are affiliated with larger bodies in Great Britain, so we manage to have some degree of reciprocity.
These bodies safeguard the standards of education and safeguard the standards of practice but there are great differences in the conditions here as regards the standards of education and practice compared with those existing in many continental countries. I should like to mention one. In many of the European medical schools classes throughout the undergraduate period are very large. The numbers of students taught at a time often reach several hundreds. They rarely see the head of a department, except at a distance, and, of course, they never have direct personal contact with patients until examination time.
In these islands students begin to see patients from the time they enter most medical schools—certainly in mine. From the time they are within two years of being qualified they get increasing degrees of clinical responsibility. They may have one or two particular patients and be responsible, under the supervision of qualified doctors in the hospital, for the care of those patients. At that stage, as they pass their final examination, they enter the hospital as interns and become part of the machinery and part of the staff of the hospital. If you take a corresponding graduate of a continental European medical school, who has just passed his final examination, he may not be able to accept that sort of responsibility at all. He will never have had that introduction to the development of clinical responsibility. If the free movement of workers—and I suppose doctors must be included among the workers—takes place and this is interpreted literally, we may have people, who happen to know enough of the language to get away with it, applying for and having to be considered for appointment as interns in our hospitals and as members of our junior medical staff. This may lead to great difficulties.
There are similar problems about practice. During the last few years in these islands we have only recognised the need to develop special areas in medical practice—the same is probably true of engineering. Certainly it is true as regards dentistry—and we have evolved a special training programme, so that a person is not recognised as a specialist in a particular area unless he has had the advantage of this training. In most European countries they have a training programme, but it is vastly different from ours and is not nearly as rigorous. There is nothing to prevent a doctor from calling himself a specialist of some kind without having gone through this programme. You might have such people coming here and setting up as specialists when, in fact, their degree of expertise is very small.
Another function of these supervisory bodies is to safeguard the ethical standards of medical practice and the same is true of the other professions. Again, this is largely to safeguard the public. A doctor is not allowed to advertise. You cannot imagine a situation in which a number of doctors advertise themselves, each as the best doctor practising in the town. How is a patient to judge which one he would go to? This is very seriously regarded by the supervisory bodies in this country and in the United Kingdom. There are very severe sanctions applying if a doctor transgresses this rule. Their relationships with their patients must be on strictly professional lines and it is one unpleasant duty, from time to time, to sit on the Disciplinary Committee of the General Medical Council and to remove from the register a doctor who has not conformed to the standards meted out.
This is necessary for the protection of the public but I am not satisfied that the same ethical standards exist in the continental European countries. This is not to say that doctors there are unworthy. I am quite certain that many of them are as good as, if not better than, ours. However, we have the safeguard of these regulations here and to admit to practice here people who are not used to this sort of restriction will lead to complications. From a professional point of view, the Minister, of course, is interested in this, too. I should like him to tell me if any thought has been given to this. I know that our professional supervisory bodies may have thought about it, and I know that the Department of Health and the Minister for Health have considered it, but I am not quite clear as to what they propose to do in this difficult situation.
Arising from that, I should also like to raise the question of general higher education. In most continental countries almost every school leaver is entitled to enter a university. The entry to a particular university faculty in Paris or Rome might be 1,000 in a year, whereas we might be admitting 100 or 150. This leads to enormous difficulties in teaching. These students are taught in very large classes and at the end of a year they usually have a stiff examination and the size of a class gets very much smaller. It is a different approach to the whole system of higher education and if it were introduced to this country and if we had to conform to the practices in the European countries, I think we would be in great difficulty. I should like very much to know if the Minister or his colleagues in the Government have discussed this, and, if so, have they come to any conclusion about how we might sort this out.
I should just like to add that again I hope we will go along with the proposal to join the European Economic Community if the opportunity offers but in doing this I agree that we have many problems to face and in regard to those I am particularly interested in I should like to know if any thought has been given to them.
I am not concluding the debate, as would happen normally in the Dáil. First, I welcome the opportunity which the motion gives for debate in the Seanad because, since the White Paper which we are debating was published in April last year, events have moved quite rapidly in relation to our application and that of the other applicant countries. I would say that the negotiations are now at a crucial stage, or the crucial stage is beginning.
With the negotiations advancing and the date of accession drawing near, it is essential that people become interested in the Community and the effect of membership for Ireland. I am constantly hearing about this matter of communication and information. People say the Government have not informed the people. I am quite well aware of the problem because having myself had to study what is normally the information available to four or five Departments of State so that I could deal with different aspects of membership as well as political studies, I know it is almost an impossible task to expect everybody who is interested to sit down and do the same study. It would be desirable if everybody could do so, but this is the problem. It is not a question of the Government not giving information but the information available is such as to require really considerable study by everybody who is interested. Apart from the type of factual information which is available, there is the fact that the future in or out of the Community is not clear to any country. Decisions however have to be made on the information available.
However, we have been talking for ten years about membership of the European Economic Community. Now there is increasing attention and this encourages me to think that the information which we are making available will be studied by everybody who feels that he wants to make a personal decision and a personal contribution to the debate. It is not necessary to say that for people who feel they have not the time to study and are willing to accept the study done by all the officers of the State plus the Government since 1961, there is no onus on them to engage in a detailed examination of the subject. But anybody who would make a decision against membership of the Community at this time, against the considered judgment of the Government, should study all the information available. That is fair enough to ask.
The debate has naturally covered a wide range and some questions have been raised which I will try to answer, but I propose to concentrate on some aspects of our application which, I think, have particular relevance at the present time. I do not intend to go into detail on the pros and cons of membership for Ireland. This ground has been covered. It has been covered by me, by the Taoiseach, by former Taoiseachs and other members of the Government and it will be covered again. There will be continuing discussion on this. The pros and cons can easily be marshalled and examined, and they will be.
I think that we should take more into account now in our discussions the rapidly developing position in which we find ourselves in relation to the Community. Talking about EEC is no longer an academic exercise. The facts are, and we will have to bear them in mind, that a decision was taken by successive Governments that we should join the Communities. An application was made for membership and we are now very much involved in negotiations to determine the terms of our entry into the Communities. It is most important that our thinking and our actions should be increasingly oriented towards these facts.
It is ten years since the Government applied for membership. The decision to apply was based on exhaustive studies. I do not accept Senator Kennedy's view when he said we decided first and then brought up the arguments. There was an exhaustive examination of the economic options open to us and how we might best ensure the national interest and the welfare of the Irish people in a situation where the countries of Europe were moving closer together in economic groupings better to achieve their own national economic goals and to advance the prosperity of their peoples.
The negotiations in 1961 did not succeed, as everybody knows, but we regarded that as a temporary setback and we still believed that the move for the creation of a wider and more united Europe would continue. We remained convinced that the future of Ireland lay in Europe. We maintained the efforts which had been initiated in the beginning of the sixties with the EEC in prospect, efforts aimed at increasing the competitiveness and efficiency of Irish industry and in preparing the economy generally for the obligations and opportunities of membership.
One of the things I find in any argument is that people will not face the real alternatives. We have examined the alternative to membership. If people feel we are not competitive enough now for membership of the EEC, I tell them that we would want to be a great deal more competitive to stay out and find markets outside that situation.
The Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement was mentioned here and this should be seen in the context of developing the country towards free trade. Senator Kennedy took part with me in preparing legislation for redundancy and re-settlement, the setting up of AnCO, the training and re-training of workers—all these were preparing for free trade and competitiveness. I think the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement was always described by Mr. Lemass as a logical outcome of the efforts already made in terms of EEC application and preparedness. Anybody who feels that the effort of the Free Trade Area Agreement with Britain has not altogether been to our benefit must remember that one of the main benefits we sought to derive from that Free Trade Area Agreement was increased competitiveness, increased attention of Irish management to the absolute need for proper equipment, proper management, training of managers. As everybody here knows, the years of exhortation produced very little response from some managers. They had to find the competition before they would respond to it and the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement was an essential part of our preparation for free trade conditions.
When the opportunity presented itself in 1967, we reactivated our application for membership of the Community. This reactivation was again based on study and the firm belief of the Government that the future of our country would best be served in economic and political co-operation with the member states of the Community and those other countries seeking membership, and in that way our own best interests would be served.
With the approach of the opening of the negotiations for enlargement, in June we again undertook an assessment—by this time it could be called a reassessment—of the implications for Ireland of joining the Communities. These implications are set out in the White Paper which is the subject of the motion before the House. The reassessment which we made last year has reinforced the Government in their conviction that the original decision to apply for membership of the Communities was the right one. With the opening of negotiations we felt that we should press ahead with our application and this we did.
I should like to make it clear once more that the Government, having considered exhaustively all the implications of membership, are fully satisfied that the aims of national economic policy are much more likely to be achieved within the EEC than if Ireland stayed outside. I do not know if it is necessary to restate what the economic objectives are—the expansion of our economy at a pace and to an extent that it will enable the country to achieve full employment; the cessation of voluntary emigration; and a standard of living for our people comparable to that of other countries in Western Europe. They are the targets. I do not think that there is anybody in the country who would not agree or fully support these national objectives.
It is in relation to the means to be employed for achieving these objectives and the environment in which our efforts should be undertaken that we find differences. The Government are convinced that membership of the European Community will provide the scope and the dynamism whereby we can reach the goals on which we have set our sights.
I listened to Senator Kennedy who speaks, as he says, for the trade union movement. We share a great deal of his membership in one form or another with the Fianna Fáil organisation. If he is bothered about the future of workers, and I am sure he is, then he has worries about these workers if we do not become members of the European Communities. He has to consider the position if we stayed in a narrow home market without any expansion in employment, and he has to consider whether, if we do not become competitive, this home market will itself survive? The survival of the present employment level and the creation of new employment are at stake too.
I appreciate that busy trade union officials must find it difficult to get clear information. I would suggest that the trade unions should contact trade unions in the countries which are already members. Perhaps we could come to some arrangement for having meetings, not in Brussels with officials of the Community but with people who have experienced this period of lack of information. I have met people from member countries who went through all the anxieties which are now being expressed in trade union circles, and in the Seanad and the Dáil. It would be a very valuable exercise if the trade union movement here would make contact with the countries which are already members.
I believe that the great majority of people in Ireland support entry into the EEC. It is reflected in the support of both sides of the House. I do not agree with Professor Quinlan that the Houses do not reflect public opinion. There is wide acceptance that membership of the Community represents the means, perhaps the only means given the limitations necessarily imposed on us in the world of today, to act independently in economic and trading matters to achieve the national objective of which I have spoken.
There are those who disagree but there is no evidence that they represent much more than a small minority. In disagreeing and making assertions to a public which has not the time to do all the study which I spoke of, there is obligation on them to put clearly before the public how otherwise than as a member of the enlarged EEC we could hope to pursue effectively and realise the economic objectives on which we are all agreed.
During the debate I was very much annoyed with people who say: "We do not know." They are always saying that. Unless we can make everyone in the country as fully informed as I have made myself, then they will not join. The opposite should be the case. Those who say that we should not join in spite of the Government's examination of the situation have an onus to put clearly before the people how we will be able to supply jobs, how we will get a better standard of living, how we will get markets for our farmers. They have failed to do this. I am not surprised that they have failed. Much of their arguments are based on a misunderstanding of facts and of a failure to face up to the facts. There seems to be a disturbing refusal to consider the nature of the Community and the progress within the Community during the past 13 years. They have refused to examine objectively the fact of our own economic situation and our prospects for development in the light of the options open to us as a small country.
I have heard people who oppose the EEC assert that membership would spell ruin for our economy. I do not think that they could believe that: it is only an excuse with them. I said at one time in the Dáil that, if they felt they could succeed in this campaign and then be held responsible for succeeding, they would not try it at all. They could not believe it in the face of all the experience of the member countries during the last 13 years. It is extraordinary that in all the criticisms of the EEC and our joining it there is no effort made to relate the prospects for Ireland to the experience of the small member countries such as Belgium. Luxembourg and the Netherlands, who had the same worries and anxieties 13 years ago that we have now. Membership has meant for them economic prosperity and social advancement on a scale that they had never experienced before.
Still, people say that we do not know what will happen. Of course, we do. We know what happened to other countries who are members of the Community. It is only fair that we should measure the possibility of our future by what has happened to other small countries who have joined the Community.
I have heard no mention from the opponents for membership of the underdeveloped area of southern Italy— Mezzogiorno—which has, by a combination of national and community endeavour and financial assistance, achieved as high a rate of economic growth as anywhere else in the Community. Before membership the rate of growth in Mezzogiorno was going down while the rate of growth in northern Italy was going up. Membership has equalised this. That underdeveloped area has a higher rate of growth than what was envisaged for them so that now they are equal to the others. I would suggest that people who are honestly responsible to memberships, such as the trade unions for their members, should visit the countries which have joined the Communities and whose people have experience and have had these anxieties. I am not saying it is wrong to have such worries. I think it is quite natural that people with such a responsibility should have serious anxiety and want to get fuller information. The best thing they can do is visit the countries, visit the trade unions and the parties that have gone through the same experience.
There has been some mention by opponents of entry into the EEC of some form of trade agreement or association with the Community. This is not a serious alternative to full membership. With Britain a member of an enlarged EEC, a trade agreement or association relationship with the Community would place in jeopardy our exports, particularly our agricultural exports, to Britain. The very limited benefits we would hope to gain would never make up for the loss or the serious diminution of our agricultural exports to Britain. In this situation of whatever external relationship with the Community they envisage we would have no say in the decisions of the Community and, no matter what Professor Quinlan smiles at, this Community now and in the future will be making decisions which seriously affect our trading position and our political future. If serious decisions are being made about our future, political and economic, then we should have some say in the making of those decisions.
These considerations should be placed squarely before the people. We have been endeavouring to do so. Much valuable information has been made available. The fact is that, if communications break down, it is not always the fault of those at the sending end. If you send people information and if they do not read it or listen to it or study it, it is not your fault. Much valuable information has been made available. We have an Information Unit set up recently in my Department with the specific function of informing people on the EEC. The first booklet and some leaflets with information for the public will be published shortly. As Senators know, the Irish Council for the European Movement has already published some leaflets. As the negotiations go on the Oireachtas and the general public will be kept informed of developments. When negotiations are concluded full information on the terms of our accession will be made available by the Government and will be the subject of debate in the Oireachtas. As regards this question of information, I would advise people who want information to seek it from this Information Unit. Certain specialised forms of information should be available from the Departments of State concerned.
I wish to refer to the point raised by Senator Jessop about the right of establishment and the right of free movement of workers. There are in the Treaty provisions concerning the mutual recognition of diplomas and qualifications, but not much progress has been made in the freedom of movement at professional level. But there have been set up in Brussels groups representing the professional bodies of The Six and my Department has contacted the corresponding professional bodies here and given them details with the names of officials in these groups. They have been urged to make their own direct contact. It is thought desirable that professional bodies should make their own direct contact with groups in Brussels, set up to represent the professional bodies in The Six. Their names will be available to the bodies here or in my Department or in the Department of Health in the case of doctors.
With regard to the negotiations, Members will have received recently the report which I circulated on the progress of our negotiations. It is a clear and comprehensive report giving full information on matters which have arisen in our negotiations or which will arise, the problems as we see them and the positions we have taken in regard to the matters which present problems and the progress made under the various items. Anyone reading that will agree that the Irish negotiators, far from being passive participants, as has been suggested, have taken the initiative in putting forward detailed proposals in all sectors where our vital interests are concerned. This includes the major question of transitional measures to apply to industry, agriculture and financing, which is common to all the applicant countries as well as matters which are peculiar to this country.
Sometimes it seems to me that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the EEC and the negotiations are all about. The Community is built on the Treaty of Rome. Its very nature requires acceptance by each member state of this Treaty. There can be no question of selecting the part of the Treaty which suits you and not accepting others. Each member in The Six already has had to accept the Treaty of Rome and its objectives. A sine qua non of membership, indeed of negotiation, has been the acceptance by the applicants of the Treaty of Rome in full, the objectives of the Treaty, the decisions made under the Treaty and the options taken up under the Treaty. Our acceptance of this had to be affirmed and was affirmed in the realisation that, without doing so, membership would be an impossibility and in the conviction that membership would be of benefit to this country and her people.
This is basic to our understanding of what is going on at the negotiations. We are not negotiating changes in the Treaty of Rome to suit us. The Treaty of Rome is not negotiable by us, by Britain, by Norway, by Denmark or by any of the Six. The negotiations are mainly concerned with working out with the Community mutually acceptable terms of accession for the applicant countries. What is involved here are transitional arrangements to enable both the applicants and the member states to make the necessary adaptations and adjustments. I can assure this House that, in working out the transitional arrangements we are, and will, be concerned to ensure that Ireland's particular interests are taken fully into account and provided for.
There are some special matters which, by the nature of the problems they pose, require to be considered in the negotiations, separately from those being dealt with in the context of transitional arrangements. I refer to the question of fisheries, and the purchase of land by non-nationals. Both these questions and the positions we have taken in the negotiations in relation to them are fully covered in the report on the progress of the negotiations which I have circulated. Therefore, I will confine myself to reassuring the Seanad that the Government are fully aware of the problems which would be involved for this country if the provision of the Community's common fisheries policy—which includes common access to fishery waters—was to be applied here or if the Community were to introduce the full right of establishment in agricultural land, without our special situation in relation to land purchase being taken fully into account. These are matters which we shall be pursuing and pursuing forcefully in the negotiations.
A question which is looming very largely in the Community now and which is of major importance to us is regional policy. As a result of decisions taken recently by the Council of Ministers of the Community in relation to the creation of an economic and monetary union the question of regional policy has taken on added importance in the Community. I stressed, at the last meeting of our negotiations with the Community, that structural and regional problems take on a new and vital significance for both individual members states and for the Community as a whole in the context of the proposed evolution towards economic and monetary union.
There is a question here of shared responsibility. Our own Government, like the governments of the other member states of an enlarged Community, continue to have the responsibility of promoting the economic and social progress of our people. We see also a need for community action. I am glad to say that the Community has recognised that regional policy is the most efficient means of ensuring progress towards economic and monetary union because it aims at the correction of existing disequilibria and permits the various regions to resolve any difficulties of adaptation that might arise.
It is realistic to expect, as a result of the recent Community decisions on economic and monetary union, greater progress in future in the evolution of a Community regional policy. The precise path which this evolution will take has not been decided. Once we become members of the enlarged EEC we will be in a position to influence the working out of the community regional policy in the direction we would favour. In the meantime, we must continue to press ahead with our own regional development efforts.
There is a double opposition in this area of regional development. There are people who want more community activities and in answering them I have to deal also with people who feel that national policies will not be permitted by the Community. My information, from my discussions with the Community, is that the most the Community would want to do is to co-ordinate national policies and after that to give an incentive for the improvement of national regional policy. There is some element of fear in the minds of the people who do not want the Community to become too active here that the decisions and options open to national governments would be reduced. From the experience of the countries already in The Six, those who are anxious to have more community activity are those who need more regional policy developments. Therefore, they do not see community activity as anything but beneficial to them.
I should like to say something now about our underdeveloped areas in the west. The Government are convinced that entry into the EEC will work to the benefit of the west, not the reverse. It is important that people in the west should grasp that and should not be misled into expecting some kind of doom. I was disappointed by some of the people who predicted doom— a doom I believe will never come —to the west in the context of EEC membership. The shocking economic and social past of the west has inevitably left a legacy of insecurity, a feeling that the west is always on the losing side. At its worst this attitude created a sense of defeatism in regard to the economic problems in the west but I think this attitude is now almost dead. However, it did constitute a psychological obstacle to development and was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. The most hopeful portent for the future of the west is the newly-strengthened belief of its people that it has a future and their determination to ensure that future. It is vital that this determination should not be weakened in any way by fears of imaginary dangers of what will happen to them when we enter the EEC. If the west itself came to believe that it was finished nobody or nothing—in Dublin or Brussels—could save it. Entry into the EEC will not finish the west. The conditions under which the people in the west strive for economic and social advance would be improved by membership of the EEC, not worsened; their confidence in the future, in the context of EEC membership, should be greater, not less.
I am afraid I have taken more than 20 minutes but——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Under our present resolution the Minister is not confined in any way.
Thank you. I should like to emphasise how rapidly developments are taking place in relation to our application. We are in the middle of the negotiations, a crucial stage has been reached, and we expect in the coming months that it will be possible to reach agreements, at least in principle, on the major issues arising in the negotiations with all the applicant countries. In the White Paper of April, 1970, the Government stated that it would not be unreasonable to expect that negotiations and ratification would be completed in time to allow accession to take effect in 1973. On the basis of progress made to date in the negotiations and the prospects ahead I think that that forecast still stands. In fact the 1st January, 1973, is the date of accession being postulated on all sides at the negotiations. Our concentration, therefore, must increasingly be on the preparation of the country and of all sectors of the economy for membership, so that we shall be fully prepared to face the challenges of membership and avail fully of the great opportunities that membership will present to us.
The evolution of economic and trading conditions in Europe, and in the world, the remarkable growth in co-operation between countries in the post-war period, must make us realise that Ireland cannot, any more than the other countries of Europe, large or small, acting alone, hope to gain the things which we desire for our people in terms of economic and social progress. We can achieve these goals, which we have set ourselves, only by integrating our economy and our market with those of other countries in Europe. The most advantageous environment, from our point of view, in which we can do this is in membership of the European Economic Community.
Somebody asked what would happen if British negotiations do not go through. We have made studies on what facts are available but the decision of the European Community was to complete the transition period and strengthen their institutions and to enlarge. If the negotiations with one of the four applicants break down theoretically the section under which application is made is still there. Any country willing to accept, and able to carry, the obligations of membership can apply but if the negotiations break down this time—and I do not think they will break down—I imagine a totally new situation will be created not alone for us but for the communities. While we would have to examine the options then open to us, the Communities would find themselves greatly changed. It would not be a useful exercise to publicly examine the possibility of a breakdown. I believe that the four applicants will be members by 1st January, 1973.
Today's debate will serve a very useful purpose in initiating a nation-wide discussion about our entry into the EEC. I hope what has been said here today will be widely reported by the mass media and that a better informed public will be able to discuss the pros and cons.
I am on the side of those who favour membership. I believe our future lies in joining the EEC. This is a turning point in the history of our country, as the Treaty of Rome will be regarded, in years ahead, as a turning point in the history of Europe. On the threshold of a period such as this, it is right that people whose interests are at stake should have sufficient knowledge to discuss the matter intelligently. I have been impressed by the contributions made here in today's discussion and I hope it will be a forerunner of more discussions, not only here, but in the other House and among the people throughout the country.
Our entry into the EEC can be a distinctive one, perhaps not as distinctive as it would have been if we had obtained our freedom at an earlier date in history. If we had obtained our freedom in 67 or 98 and had been allowed to develop our own Celtic way of life down the centuries, we would have been able to make a more distinctive contribution to the EEC. As was said by Senator O'Higgins and other Senators, we can make a distinctive contribution. We are the only Celtic nation on earth and we are a people who have been for a long time subject to another nation. Now we can sit at the conference table with people who were domineering. Our viewpoint may modify theirs and in that way we should make a valuable contribution in the years ahead and perhaps alter the line of thought that might prevail without our presence.
It is no harm to emphasise the part we played in the Dark Ages when our missionaries and scholars went to labour in the very countries with whom we now join as a member of the EEC. People living in those countries who have read our history are aware of the role we played then, and they should be anxious to welcome us into their midst. Later on in our history we turned towards Europe for aid. It is sometimes said that the countries who did offer help may have had ulterior motives but that is not true in every case.
European trends had an effect on our attitudes here, for example in the days of Wolfe Tone. The thoughts of the French people definitely moulded the thoughts of Wolfe Tone and the thoughts of the Hungarians and other peoples in central Europe moulded the mind of Arthur Griffith. Although separated for geographical reasons from the people of Europe, we were part of these people.
I hope we will be successful in our application for entry into the EEC and that it will prove to be beneficial. When we take into account the struggles we have had in undoing the ravages of centuries of occupation, we have played a noble part in world affairs. We joined the League of Nations, we joined the United Nations, we have sent Peace Corps to various parts of the world where trouble existed. Despite our insular position we have proved to be an outward looking people and that qualifies us at least for consideration as a member of the EEC.
It is not enough for the leader of a political party or the leader of the Government to say "In my opinion this is what should be done". The democratic process means that all political parties should do their utmost to ensure that the citizens are well informed and know what they are talking about. I am not naïve enough to think that everyone should understand the full implications in regard to such aspects as sovereignty, agriculture, industry and so on, but every intelligent adult should know what our entry into the EEC means. I do not want to be critical but I feel the Government are falling down on this.
Senator Robinson brought up a point which I intended to refer to. That was the difference between the publicity effort in gearing the public for Decimal Day, which was an insignificant event compared with our entry into the EEC, and publicity in regard to EEC membership. I have heard discussions on our entry into the EEC among intelligent young people and I felt they were discussing something about which they had not sufficient knowledge. I hope that today is the beginning of a campaign that will undo all that. By the time another year has gone by we shall have a much better informed people.
It is too bad that at this time of all times in our history our image as a people should be carved by events that have happened in Northern Ireland. The masses of people in Europe, thinking in terms of Ireland, regard it as a small island on the western seaboard of Europe. They do not think of it in terms of being divided, and trouble in Belfast, Derry, or Dungannon has an unfortunate effect on our image in Europe. I hope that that sort of image will be improved in the near future and that wiser counsels will prevail. It will be to their detriment as well as to ours if we continue to present an unfavourable image in Europe.
While I do not wish to score a point on anybody, it is unfortunate that in this part of the country we, ourselves, over the last 18 months have not been presenting a favourable image to Europe. I hope that what we have been doing among ourselves will not have caused irreparable damage to us. Apart from the image that they have been presenting, Ministers who have allowed themselves to be distracted—to put it mildly—during the past year could not have been giving the necessary concentrated effort to the job of preparing the Irish people for entry into the EEC. I hope that wiser counsels will prevail at Government level and at all other influential levels north and south and that we will get down to the business of being practical people and set about restoring our image and making our country fit in every way to become members of the European Economic Community.
It is also unfortunate that we are high in the European league table for strikes. Industrial unrest that has prevailed here during the past few years cannot have created a very favourable impression for us and, worse still, it will have the effect of frightening off industrialists from, perhaps, North America. In the course of time they might come here to set up industries in order to be able to operate from Ireland in the European Economic Community to advantage. I hope that the industrial unrest will not be the cause of our inability to develop industrially. I am not attempting to apportion the blame to anybody for what has happened. We are all in a position to see that it has not done us any good. I hope that it will bring people together where wiser counsel will prevail and that in the interval between now and the conclusion of our negotiations, our image will have been improved.
Among the farming community there has been a great deal of unrest because they are not well enough informed. I am not speaking of the average man who works in the fields. I attended an NFA seminar as an onlooker some time ago and I was astonished to hear it said there that it was not exactly known what was expected from agriculture when we enter the EEC. In my innocence I thought we knew that we were to benefit through the beef trade. I understood that recent Government policy had been geared towards that objective.
They believed that after New Zealand we have the most favourable climate on earth for the development of the dairy industry. They are at a loss to understand why we are not developing the dairy industry; they did not say that it was the fault of the Government here. They did think that we were in the process of being pressurised by European countries who are not as favourably placed as we are, climatically or otherwise, for dairying. They considered that that was an unfair practice in some of these countries to put us out of the dairy industry. That is something that troubled some speakers at top brass level in the NFA.
They were also anxious about the possibility of the withdrawal of subsidies on fertilisers and lime. They believed that when we become full members of the EEC subsidised fertilisation of soil will be prohibited. If they are wrong, it should be retracted. If they are right, we should now be engaged on such an active policy of refertilisation and the rehabilitation of our land that we should have everything shipshape by the time we become members. They believed that work on the land project scheme is largely thwarted because of the failure, down the years, to have got down to the problem of arterial drainage. In County Cavan, where I live, there are thousands of acres of land that are less than productive because of the fact that the River Erne was not drained. For many years farmers in that area were told that it could not be done until the Northern Ireland Government drainage department drained part of the Erne in Fermanagh. That was done but we are no nearer having the Ernc or its tributary, the Annalee, drained. The farmers in that area are of opinion that that will be the cause of our being unable to produce as much as we could produce.
They also said that there was a great outlet for sheep, especially for the early lambs from Easter until 1st June. They quoted figures to show that our sheep population has declined. If one of the most worthwhile markets in the European Economic Community is the production of lamb, then it is a sad commentary that our sheep numbers should be declining.
Everybody knows about the prevailing unrest with regard to the belief that foreigners can come here to buy land. A statement was made about that in the other House yesterday. It is something that has caused annoyance among many people and I should like to know that, if we become members of the EEC, will we have a period with special concessions——
We will be able to buy it all ourselves.
——and if the Minister is negotiating towards this end. People would like to be reassured on matters like this. What was said by me and by the members of the NFA at the seminar was not solely for the purpose of criticising the Government or anybody on our negotiating team. I am the first to admit that our Minister for Foreign Affairs and his team of negotiators have a very difficult job on hands. I quite realise that these gentlemen are up against the best brains in Europe and that it will strengthen their hand and their ability as a team if they know that they have the backing and the guidance of a well-informed people and if they are not annoyed and run from one side to the other because of the fact that pressure is being put on them by people who are not as well informed as they should be.
Senator Jessop spoke about the education of doctors. Senator Kelly and Senator Robinson spoke about the legal aspect. It is not for me to go into these points but it is rather unfortunate that at this stage in our development we should be cutting down on the oral examinations in continental languages rather than developing them. Surely proficiency in a language depends on proficiency in the spoken language first. That is what the test should be. This is not strictly relevant but I always thought that we would have made much greater headway with the revival of the Irish language if we had given a very large percentage of the 600 marks in the leaving certificate for proficiency in speaking the language rather than for proficiency in dealing with archaic points of grammar and old poetry that was handed down.
Hear, hear.
That was my belief all along and I further believe now that it is a great mistake that we should get away from examinations in oral French, et cetera at this very time when we want to get into closer communication with students. I believe we should be able to talk to these people. You can always get the bloke sitting at a desk in a back room some place who will do the writing for you and communicate with the person in Paris or Marseilles or elsewhere. If you want to do business with him you need to be able to talk to him and you do not want to be reduced to the level of writing a note and handing it over to him and waiting for his reply. That was a mistake.
Hear, hear. I agree with the Senator.
I think, too, that we should have been geared for this down along the line in the leaving certificate by insisting on a more detailed study of the history and geography of the countries of the EEC rather than range all over the world.
After some of the more erudite speeches, I am afraid I will be a little bit plebeian possibly in my approach to this whole aspect. Basically, I belong to the agricultural panel here and it is with agriculture I feel I should deal The question about the entry into Europe is whether we should, in fact, join the greater Europe and reap the benefits accordingly or whether we should stay outside Europe in an economic wilderness
One or two speakers have already raised the question as to whether we knew anything about agriculture in our approach to Europe It has also been suggested that most of the benefits that will flow to this country will flow to us through the agricultural sector of our economy and then only to a small section of our farmers. I do not entirely agree with this. I do not agree with it at all, in fact, and I will endeavour to show by what I have to say that the benefits that will flow here through agriculture will flow to all sectors of the economy as well as the agricultural section. We are an exporting country. We must export what we produce in order to pay for what we import. We have to import raw materials for our industry. We have to import farm machinery, tractors, road transport machinery and many other things. All these have to be paid for and so it is incumbent on us to sell what produce we have, to sell in the best markets and at the best prices that we can possibly get.
Traditionally, and, indeed, geographically, England has been our best customer mainly for agricultural goods. During the past ten or 12 years we exported a fair amount of industrial goods to Britain as well but in the main we regard her as being the big customer for our agricultural produce. Strangely enough, it is true to say that we have never regarded her as being a good customer. She is a big customer but not a very good one. She has not paid properly for our agricultural produce except when she had to.
In 1965 the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement was initiated and this was designed to phase out certain duties on British goods coming into this country. As the Minister said this was a good thing in its own way. The duties will be phased out by 1975 and over that period industry could make a gradual adjustment to free trade when it would eventually come about. In return for this we got certain concessions on the British market for our agricultural produce. Our beef and store cattle benefited substantially from the subsidies paid to British farmers but, unfortunately—and this is the kernel of some of the questions that were raised here tonight—we are on a quota basis of supply in certain commodities to Britain, mainly butter, bacon and cheese. We supply these on a quota basis. I believe this inhibits our production at home for the simple reason that when we get up to quota we have to sell in very indifferent markets outside of Britain and receive very bad prices. This is not much good to our farmers and, indeed, it is a very heavy cost on our taxpayers too.
Other quotas apply also to agricultural products. We have a beef quota to the USA. We have a levy imposed on our wheat production as soon as we hit 350,000 barrels of wheat. We have an acreage quota on our beet and vegetable acreage. All these restrict farm output and because of this I maintain that when we go into Europe, with the guaranteed prices which we will get there and the open market which we will have, provided Britain goes in with us—Britain has never been a good customer—we will have her where we want her. She will have to be a good customer whether she likes it or not. Britain likes cheap food and it is costing our taxpayers £90 million to support this cheap food. This means that our taxpayers have to find £40 to £45 per head of population to support agriculture every year.
In Britain where because of the high population they can subsidise agriculture to a greater extent, the comparative tax per head of population is only £8 or £9. When we go into Europe it is confidently forecast that our contribution to the Community Fund for agriculture will be £19 million or £20 million. This will mean a per head of population tax of about £8 or £9 to support agriculture and this will give an idea of the saving that will accrue in taxes to the ordinary taxpayer in this country.
I believe that with stabilised prices within the Community for our agricultural goods, with our goods free from quota or levy, Irish agriculture will surge forward within the Community. If we value our present agricultural production at Common Market prices we find that the value would be £92 million more than what we are getting for it at present. Related to a small farm in any part of the country producing milk this means a 20 cow farm which would be, say, a 35 to 40 acre farm producing milk and calves, will give a gross output of £1,000 more in terms of money in the Common Market than it would give now. There are 80,000 viable farms. There are 40,000 that are almost viable, or just about viable, and there are 67,000 farms that are non-viable.
I contend that as a result of the boost in income which all farmers will get when we enter the EEC many of these near-viable and non-viable farms will become viable. The result of this will be that it will certainly slow up the drift from the land. It will help relieve pressure in our industries for a time after entering the Common Market. Any commodity prices acceptable to Europe are more than acceptable to us. We have the right soil, climate, longer growing season and a shorter winter. We can produce grass at £6 which is equivalent to a ton of barley. It costs the Europeans £40 per ton to produce the same commodity. We can winter our cattle in housing at a cost of £10 to £20 for a herd of cows. It will cost a European £150 to £200 to house his cattle satisfactorily over the winter period. This gives an idea of the capital cost which the Irish farmer can save in comparison with his European counterpart. Our farmers in this sort of environment will have their production surging forward and this in turn will increase the numbers employed in our food processing industries.
There are 7,000 people employed in the meat processing industry. There are about 7,000 people employed in the milk processing industry. There are 3,000 people employed in the vegetable processing industry. It is safe to forecast that on our entry into Europe, after an interval of time which it will take for us to expand, we will be able to employ possibly up to 20,000 more people in the food processing industries in this country. This is a very substantial volume of employment and will possibly ease the employment situation generally throughout the country. Everything indicates that vast opportunities exist for agriculture in the Common Market. Benefits will flow through the whole Community as a result of our entering the market. There will be many more jobs in our food industries. There will be many more jobs in our in-put industries for agriculture and for service industries as well.
I have always felt that industry based on agriculture would be the ideal situation in which to promote industries. I still believe that that is the case. We have a most glorious opportunity on entering Europe to ensure that there is a surge forward in this type of food processing industry. After all, we are the people who are able to provide food at a cheaper rate and we are the people who should be able to do this far better than anybody else within the ten countries that will eventually make up this Community. I appreciate the improbability of full employment as a result of this. But we can make a very great contribution to employment as a result of this boost forward in agricultural production.
If we are to derive the greatest benefits from entry there are certain things which must be induced in some particular sections of agriculture. I would point to the rationalisation of our creameries as being a step that must be taken. It must be hurried along so that these creameries will be doing their job at the cost at which they ought to be doing them. Likewise, rationalisation within the bacon industry is absolutely essential. When I say "within the bacon industry" I mean that the whole industry from top to bottom needs rationalisation and this must be undertaken in no uncertain fashion. It is true that there will have to be some rationalisation on our farms. With the increase in incomes which our farmers will achieve in this new environment many of our farms, particularly the non-viable ones, will become viable to some extent for a fairly considerable period. This will, of course, ease the whole situation.
I should like to express my very sincere thanks to the Leader of the House for his efforts on our behalf. I am grateful to the Minister for Foreign Affairs as well. As a permanent critic of the Leader of the House, it is a matter of great satisfaction that the source of irritation is removed and I look forward to many more debates of this kind in the Seanad. This is a very genuine thank you to the Leader of the House because I believe that his efforts in this regard were made on behalf, not only of this side of the House but, indeed, on behalf of many members of his own party as well.
I have two very brief points to make. The first is a minor point but the second is more important. The first point is that we are all discussing this question of our entry into the EEC in a rather fatalistic atmosphere. This atmosphere is conditioned by the fact that if Britain goes into the Common Market we, as far as I can see, have simply no logical economic alternative to going in alongside her if, inleed, we can. It is an atmosphere which is only very slightly lightened by the thrilling possibility of having to elaborate a new policy in the event of Britain deciding to stay out.
One thing that has amused me, and other people inside and outside the House, with regard to the almost certainty of our accession to the EEC on some terms, at some time is that it is strange, to say the least of it, that the two political parties in this House and in the other House which have declared themselves to be most strongly in support of the whole European idea have completely neglected to make any attempt to group themselves with any of the political groupings that are at present working within the European Parliament. While the third political party represented in this House, the one which has been strongest in its opposition not only to Irish membership but to the whole concept of a Common Market, is the only one of these parties to have adopted formal links with the political groupings in the European Parliament.
I know that there has been a long tradition in the Council of Europe of Irish nonalignment carried to an almost ludicrous extent. I have often wondered to what extent this nonalignment was dictated by a genuine desire on the part of the politicians concerned to make a genuinely independent political contribution to the deliberations of that council and to what extent it was dictated by the rather frightening realisation that if they were to make these political choices they might find themselves with some very strange bedfellows. It has been said before, and I see no reason for doubting it, that in the European Parliament the two main parties in the other House might very well find themselves on the same political benches—Christian Democrats— and sharing them not only with each other but possibly with members of the Conservative and Unionist parties from the northern side of the Border.
I have often wondered if the parties concerned have really thought about the implications of this and I look forward with considerable interest to seeing the final decisions of the case.
The second point I want to make is about our neutrality. It is a word which was very much in vogue in the early fifties when the question of our application was first considered and has sunk almost into disuse since then. This is a pity because if we examine the question of our neutrality seriously and carefully we can find in it the elements of part of our contribution to the European Economic Community. I have been reading through debates and speeches on the subject and it is quite obvious that our neutrality in the last world war was, to a large extent, the creation of Mr. de Valera. It is also true to say that it was a creation which was very strongly supported not only by the political parties at that time but by the vast mass of the people. It seems to me that our neutrality had two separate strands, two separate reasons for existence. The first was connected with Partition. There was a widespread feeling in the country and in the Dáil that if we were to abandon our neutrality in the context of the second world war, and later in the context of possible agreement to sign the North Atlantic Treaty, this would in some way involve us in a recognition of the Border situation. Mr. de Valera may have thought this himself and perhaps this was one of the two main motivating forces behind his decision to uphold neutrality. Indeed, it is a motivation which also appears as recently as January of last year, in an interview with the Taoiseach, Deputy Lynch who said—I am quoting from The Irish Times of the 21st January, 1971—“We have indicated that we would not join NATO because of the suggestion that we might be accepting existing limitations to our political boundary.”
The idea that joining NATO involved an acceptance of Partition loomed very large in Mr. de Valera's mind. It has, however, been chipped away at, consistently, through the years by Mr. Seán Lemass who, on several occasions—and I will give just three very brief quotations—made very clear his own personal opinion that this interpretation of neutrality, if you like, was not the correct one—Mr. Seán Lemass, it will be remembered, made this distinction, that Mr. de Valera was referring to the second world war; Mr. Seán Lemass was referring exclusively to the question of NATO. But it seems to me quite obvious that Mr. Seán Lemass began seriously to consider the possibility of our joining NATO and to see whether our constitutional and territorial question would have anything relevant to say to that. In the Dáil in 1962, in volume 193 of the Official Report, column 1321, Mr. Seán Lemass said:
...I began to ask myself was it wise in the national interest that we should persist in forcing that interpretation on the Treaty Article.
He was referring to the Treaty Article which refers to disputes between member nations, about territory. Later, at column 1132, he said:
I began to doubt the wisdom of our straining the meaning of that Article of the Treaty....
Later on again, on the 14th February, 1962, in volume 193, column 11, the then Taoiseach, Mr. Seán Lemass said in relation to that Article: "In my view" and note that in all these quotations he is stressing that it is his view, he says "in my view", "in my opinion"—
In my view, it is not in the national interest to represent that as an undertaking to preserve the Partition situation....
Mr. Lemass was looking into his own heart in a changed situation and seeing different reasons and a different set of circumstances which encouraged him to believe that Ireland could, if necessary, join NATO without recognising the Partition situation.
I think it is true to say that he was right and I think it is equally true to say that Government thinking on this matter has been changing over the past two decades, but I also think that there is diminishing political capital to be made by Opposition parties or Independents out of the Government's change of heart on this matter. At the same time, we must realise that the whole question of Partition was not the only reason why Mr. de Valera created and forged Irish neutrality. He also created and forged Irish neutrality because he had a particular belief about the way in which a small nation should conduct its business and it is, therefore, all the more worrying that we see over the same period of time a collection of statements, again from Mr. Lemass, in which he implies that the joining of NATO is something that could be done by the Irish people almost without a thought. He said in the Dáil in 1962:
We think the existence of NATO is necessary for the preserving of peace and for the defence of the countries of western Europe, including this one. Although we are not members of NATO we are in full agreement with its aims.
Again, in February, 1962, volume 193, column 6, of the Official Report, he said:
I think it would be highly undesirable that remarks made here should give the impression in Europe that there is a public opinion in this country which regards membership of NATO as something discreditable. The view of the Government in that regard has been made clear.
But with all due respect this is not a negotiating position on our defence commitment in the Common Market. It is an invitation to international rape and what do we have to protect us against a surrender of something as precious to us to as this concept of neutrality? Well, in the first place we have the Labour Party who have consistently mentioned neutrality in their policy statements. In the second place we have the Fine Gael Party whose Foreign Affairs spokesman, Deputy Richie Ryan, has committed the party to a defence of Irish neutrality. I sometimes think, however, that Deputy Richie Ryan's ideas about neutrality do not altogether square with those of a former Leader of his party, Mr. Dillon, who, I always suspected, regarded NATO rather as the Reverend Ian Paisley regards Major Chichester-Clark, a rather inadequate instrument for the defence of all that he holds dear. Nevertheless, it is true that both Labour and Fine Gael are artificially opposed to any deviation from our traditional status of neutrality. In this they are joined by a strand of opinion within Fianna Fáil which to my mind is more authentic than that represented by the statements by Mr. Lemass which I have just quoted. It is a strand of opinion which goes back to Mr. de Valera himself who said in the Dáil in 1938:
A small nation like Ireland, if it involves itself in war, risks the loss of everything, even its liberty. It should avoid war if at all possible.
Before that, in 1935, he had said in the League of Nations at Geneva:
Make no mistake, if, on any pretence whatsoever, we were to permit the sovereignty of even the weakest State amongst us to be unjustly taken away, the whole foundation of the world system would crumble into dust.
This statement by Mr. de Valera in 1935 is echoed again in 1943 when he spoke in the Dáil on November the 16th. He said:
It is not enough to declare a policy of neutrality. You have to defend it and uphold it. The upholding of neutrality, if you are sincere about it, means that you will have to fight for your life against one side or the other, whichever attacks you.
That is the position we were in and it is the position we are in today. I find some support for this strand of thought within Fianna Fáil in an interview the Taoiseach gave on RTE on 20th January in which he said, with regard to the EEC:
If the group was attacked I do not think we could opt out of our obligations to defend it. It is not a question of neutrality but of meeting your obligations within a complex of that nature.
I do not think there has been sufficient stress placed by the Government on this aspect of our policy or, indeed, sufficient clarity about what neutrality involves. If I read Mr. de Valera, the Taoiseach and Deputy Aiken correctly, it means that we will resolutely, in or out of the EEC, adopt a policy which keeps us away from military alliances in times of peace. Deputy Aiken said in the Dáil in 1961, and I quote from Volume 189, column 461, of the Official Report:
Irrespective of the question of partition, important as that is, in our view the most important contribution which Ireland can make in international affairs is to play its part as an independent nation, free from alliances, in reducing tensions between States, and in forwarding constructive solutions for the sources of such tensions. We have endeavoured to do so, in the UN and elsewhere, by, for example, proposals aimed at restricting the spread of nuclear weapons and at encouraging the growth of areas of law. It is because our position is now internationally understood and accepted that we were free to make such proposals and that we were able to make our contribution to world peace by sending our soldiers to the United Nations Observation Force in the Lebanon in 1958 and last year to the Congo where combat troops of nations belonging to NATO and other military blocs are not acceptable.
This, I believe, is the true strand of Government, and indeed Irish policy, about neutrality. I should like to see more mention made of it explicitly and clearly by the members of the Government in their speeches. I believe, among other things, this would help to cut through the public fog which surrounds so much of the EEC debates at the moment. The idea that we should not join military alliances in times of peace is, I think, the nature of our possible contribution to the development of the EEC. Mr Walter Halstein of the EEC once said that: "We are not in business at all, we are in politics." The Government's White Paper, which we are debating today, refers to Ireland's role in the political development of the EEC. It seems to me that the main and, perhaps, in many ways the decisive contribution this country might make to the political development in the EEC, after we join, is our history of neutrality. This particular tradition of ours would, I hope, completely break the almost total identification of NATO with the EEC, as it exists at the moment, and help in the creation of an enduring witness for peace.
Níl fúm morán a rá ach ba mhaith liom ar an gcéad dul síos cúpla focal a rá i dtaobh cúrsaí na teanga mar fheictear dom féin é san CEE. An chuid is mó de na hargóintí a chualamar anseo inniu b'argóintí iad a bhfurmhór faoi dhul isteach nó fanúint amach as an CEE. Cúrsaí eacnamaíochta a bhí i gceist. Níor dearnadh aon tagairt do chúrsaí cultúra. Tar éis dó machnamh a dhéanamh ar an scéal ní feidir le duine a thuigeann stair ár dtíre gan ach aon tuairim amháin a bheith aige i leith na teanga agus an CEE, sé sin, go raibh sé de cheart againn dul isteach ann. Leis na céadta bhliain anuas tá an tír seo agus a muintir faoi thionchar Shasana agus le blianta beaga anuas ní amháin go bhfuil sí faoi thionchar Shasana ach tá sí faoi thionchar Stáit Aontaithe Meiriceá. Táimid faoi thionchar na telefíse, an radio, na scannán agus na nuachtán. Is dóigh liom gurb í an tubaiste ba mhó a thárla sa tír seo iompódh ón Gaeilge go dtí an Béarla. Nuair glacadh leis an mBéarla chaitheadh an Ghaeilge i leataobh. Níor thuigeadar go bhféadfadh dhá theanga a bheith ann—an Ghaeilge agus an Béarla i dteannta a chéile. Chaill muintir na hÉireann an Ghaeilge agus ghlac siad leis an aonteangachas mar rud nádúrtha. Dá bhrí sin san lá atá inniu ann ceapann an gnáth-dhuine in Éirinn gur rud nádúrtha é gan ach aon teanga amháin a bheith ag duine agus gur rud mí-nádúrtha é dhá theanga a bheith aige. Ní mar sin atá an scéal ar Mhór-Roinn na hEorpa. Ar MhórRoinn na hEorpa is gnáthach dhá theanga nó níos mó a bheith ag duine. An geas seo faoi aonteangachas is dóigh liom gur cosc mór é ar labhairt na Gaeilge agus ar an athbheochan.
Nuair a bhí mé thar lear in éineacht le Gaeil eile agus go raibh teangacha iasachtacha á labhairt ag daoine inár dtimpeall bhíomar ar bís chun an Ghaeilge do labhairt. Nílim a rá gur leigheas ar fhadhbanna na Gaeilge an Cómhargadh ach beidh orainn ár n-intinn a dhéanamh suas cé acu cúige den Bhreatain Mhór sinn nó tír neamhspleách. Mura gcloiseann muintir na Mór-Roinne ach Béarla uainn ní thogtha ar aon duine é dá gceapadh sé gur leis an Bhreatain Mhór a bhaineamar. Mar sin, ní thuigim cén fá go bhfuil na daoine a deir go bhfuil siad i bhfábhar athbheochan na Gaeilge agus a thógann orthu cúram na Gaeilge ar fad go láidir i gcoinne dul isteach sa Chomhargadh. Cad atá uathu? An áil leo an tír seo a bheith i gcomhnaí faoi anáil Shasana nó an mian leo bheith scartha ón Eoraip ar fad mar a bhí Tibet céad bliain ó shin? Ba mhaith liom freagra a fháil ar na rudaí sin. Ba mhaith liom cúpla focal a rá i dtaobh ceiste eile— fadhbanna an iarthair.
I was very pleased to hear the Minister mention the problems of the west of Ireland in the context of the EEC. The Minister mentioned the long history of insecurity that the people of the west experienced. The biggest problem we have, with regard to the people there—the Minister mentioned this—is their likelihood of losing faith in themselves. As the Minister said, the people of the west have begun to gain confidence in their own ability with the help of Government agencies, and particularly with their own drive and confidence, to solve their own particular problem.
There are a few reasons why our accession to the EEC will be of benefit to our western counties. One of the main benefits will be for agriculture. Agriculture is still the main source of income of the west. Senator O'Callaghan—in an excellent speech—outlined how accession to the EEC would benefit even the smaller farmers and some of the farmers not at present considered viable. By our joining the EEC there will be an increase in incomes in the west even in the case of the smaller farms not considered viable. Therefore, there will be an increase of income in the west.
The second point which arises is that more funds will be available for western development. The Minister mentioned the developments which have taken place in southern Italy with aid from these funds from the EEC. If we obtain entry to the EEC it should benefit the western counties. The people who forecast that the EEC will result in the ruination of the small farmers in the west of Ireland are doing a disservice because this could cause the people in that area to lose their nerve, and to lose confidence in themselves. It is very annoying to those of us who are living and playing our small part in the western counties in helping with their development, when pundits, even though they be natives of the west, jibe at every effort that is made by the Government to help in this development. These people are regarded as damn nuisances. It is my hope, therefore, that accession to the EEC would be of benefit to the western part of the country and would provide us with an opportunity of developing our own culture.
As one of the minority referred to by the Minister— the insignificant minority—who are opposed to entry into EEC, I should like to say a few words on this motion. One aspect of the Minister's speech here this evening, and the excellent speech we had from Senator Eoin Ryan earlier in the day, saddened me, because the essence of both those speeches was that there was no economic future for this country if we did not enter the EEC. If Britain does not obtain membership of EEC we cannot go it alone, and one is entitled to ask what are the alternatives or what of the future.
The Labour Party have consistently voiced their opposition to entry into the EEC. We are entitled to voice that opposition in spite of the fact that both the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Parties are as one party so far as our application for EEC membership is concerned. The Labour Party have been criticised, in all quarters, but particularly by the Government party. In 1965 the Labour Party opposed the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement. I heard reference here today by Fine Gael to the disastrous effects of the free trade agreement on industry in this country. I should like to remind the Fine Gael Party that in 1965 they were as enthusiastic about the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement as were the Fianna Fáil Party. They trooped into the Lobby in Leinster House with the Government Party to vote for the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement and the Labour Party voted against it.
It is no consolation to us to say here tonight "We told you so" when factories have been falling like ninepins over the past few months as a result of the free trade agreement. It is no consolation to the employees in these industries that we, in the Labour Party, said that this ill-conceived free trade agreement would bring about a serious reduction in employment in our tariff protected industries at that time.
If the free trade agreement could have such an adverse affect on employment in our industries as it is having now, when the tariffs are only half way towards reduction, what chance will those industries have of operating successfully in a free trade area? I fail to see how any of these industries can survive when they meet the full blast of European competition. Basing the future on the experience of the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement, the outlook for those employed in the industrial sector is not very bright.
Many speakers in this debate mentioned the benefits membership of the EEC will bring to the agricultural community. The advocates of membership of the European Economic Community point to the high prices which will be available for beef, mutton, dairy produce and they look forward to entry as if this was going to be the Klondyke which the agricultural community were looking forward to. Certainly there will be higher prices for cattle, for beef, for sheep, milk, dairy products, but nobody ever mentions, in that context, the price that the consumer will be compelled to pay for these commodities.
I should like to quote a paragraph from the booklet "The Common Market—Why Ireland Should Not Join!" by Anthony Coughlan, Common Market Study Group. I do not agree with everything in that booklet but there is one paragraph which is worth studying, the paragraph on the soaring cost of living, page 14.
The high price agricultural policy means high food prices for the housewife. In the Common Market at present, for example, a lb of butter cost 10s, which is double the present Irish prices; a lb of steak costs 15s; a lb of pork costs 10s and a lb of sugar costs 1s 10d. On joining the EEC, our level of food prices would approximate to the level prevailing in other member countries. The Government's White Paper estimates (par. 5.23) that there would be an increase of 11-16 per cent in present retail food prices on joining the Common Market.
If one accepts this probably conservative estimate and takes into account the effects of added value tax, already mentioned, an increase of one-fifth in food prices becomes quite likely. Such a big increase in living costs would have the effect of raising labour and industrial costs in Ireland. It would make Irish products much more expensive at a time when we would be facing extreme competition from the products of other Common Market countries that would have access to the Irish market with the establishment of free trade. The White Paper makes no attempt to estimate the effects of these high prices on Irish exports. That is a valid point. Those enthusiasts who feel there is a great time to be had by everybody in the agricultural community, when we join the Common Market, will have second thoughts when they are paying 10s-12s a pound for butter instead of the current price.
I should like to refer to another matter that is causing some anxiety and one to which the Minister referred in his speech. That is the availability of Irish land to non-nationals when we enter EEC. As the Minister has pointed out, the EEC is based on the Treaty of Rome. In essence this means that free movement of men, money and materials is granted to member countries within the Community. I fail to see how the Minister or his negotiators can negotiate our way out of having our land become available to any German, Frenchman or Italian who feels that he would like to buy a large slice of an Irish farm. In the event of our land being open for sale to any citizen of any of the European Economic countries, I fail to see how Irish people can compete with the wallets and the guaranteed cheques of these people.
It is only five years since we debated a Land Bill in this House and one section in that Bill, now an Act, attempted to prevent the sale of land to aliens. I wonder will that section be relevant now, to prevent the sale of land to citizens within the European Economic Community? Or will it apply only to Americans or Russians who might like to buy Irish land? It is very important for the Minister to spell it out that the land of Ireland will not be at the mercy of any of the European tycoons who wish to come here to buy it. In spite of the fact that we believe the price of Irish land to be high, by European standards it is still very cheap. If that is so, there is a grave danger that in 1972 and 1973 the cheque book will be able to do what the invader failed to do during the last 700 years: to take the land of Ireland away from the Irish people.
The Minister referred to the fact that there was very little hope for the future of Ireland if we did not become a member of the European Economic Community. At the same time I think that he realised, just as we all realise, that if Britain does not become a member of the EEC we must stay out. As one of the minority opposed to entry, I can only hope that Britain do not get into EEC in the near future. A Fianna Fáil Deputy, whom I shall not name, said last year:
Our options in so far as entry to the EEC is concerned are next to non-existent once Britain decides to enter.
In a nutshell that is our case as far as our application to membership of EEC is concerned.
Might I say a couple of words. I did not intend to intervene in the debate but Senator Fitzgerald's statement inspired me to interrupt.
It is time someone inspired you.
It inspired me to ask if he were serious in saying that the factories are closing down because of the Free Trade Area Agreement. Surely he realises that there are more factors than the Free Trade Area Agreement connected with the closing down of factories? Surely he realises that the people are not all fools? As a consequence of the campaign that has been waged during the past four or five years to get much more of the cake than was available, they know very well that that was bound to have repercussions on business and employment, and that is now beginning to happen.
In addition, it recalls to my mind an incident, to which I drew attention in the Seanad at the time of the Free Trade Area Agreement, and about which I made a very strong plea to the members of the trade union movement. At that time—I am sure Senator Fitzgerald will remember it—the cement workers in Drogheda were given boots by the firm. The boots were made in Drogheda by a firm that employed Irish workers and paid them good wages. The workers in the cement factory refused to wear those Irish manufactured boots. The firm were compelled to buy English made boots for the trade union workers of Drogheda, who did not give a damn about their fellow-trade unionists in the boot factory, who might have lost their employment. In due course the factory closed down and those trade unionists who insisted on getting English-made boots to work in the cement factory are probably whinging, worrying, crying and asking who is responsible.
At that time I made a plea to the leaders of the trade union movement that they should not be so complacent about social services, welfare benefits, doles and hand-outs. They should stand on their own feet. As the watch word of Labour, which they faintly sang at the end of their conference in Galway——
It is well we were singing anyway.
Well, very faintly, very faintly indeed.
More than you were.
As it says, "Get up off your feet". I appealed to them to get off their knees and do something for their fellow-workers and not to be depending on the State and on insurance and everything else. What I suggested was that the Trade Union Congress, with their tremendous power and influence, should organise a Statewide campaign in every trade union branch, in every factory, in every shop and on every shop floor, to urge the members of the trade unions to buy Irish goods which were equally as good as any other goods and that this would give employment to Irish workers. Apparently, the Trade Union Congress did not think very much of the suggestion because, although it was stated that they were urging their workers to buy Irish goods, my information was that very little progress was made in the matter.
Again whether we enter Europe or not, there is an opportunity here for the Trade Union Congress to do something for the workers, whom they claim to represent, that is, to put a little bit of Irish economic patriotism into them because they do not seem to have it. If you go to any shops where there are buyers you will find the same story I am telling here now.
I am sorry that Senator Kennedy is not here because he spoke of the half million workers whom the Trade Union Congress represent. I saw a figure quoted in the paper the other day by a research student under the trade union movement which stated that the number of organised workers represented by the Trade Union Congress was 237,000. It would be interesting to find out which was which and what is wrong with the other quarter of a million that apparently are outside the control of the Trade Union Congress.
Senator Kennedy also was worried that no information was available about the situation in regard to entry or alternatives to membership of the European Economic Community. As far as I know, the trade union movement are affiliated to the Socialist International, so is the Irish Labour Party. In every country the trade union movement have their contacts and their research services. If my memory serves me right, the Irish Labour Party delegation which went to Brussels some time ago consisted of the leader and several other leading figures in the party. They made an on-the-spot study of the European Economic Community, came back and apparently must have made a report to their movement. Surely, if they went to Brussels, were not able to find out the answers to their questions, came back and are waiting until now to find out information that was available to them in Brussels and which they could get on application to any of the trade union research centres in the six member countries of the European Economic Community, then they must be very slow indeed.
It is up to the Labour Party, who appear to be spearheading this drive against membership of the European Economic Community, to put the case against our joining. It is up to them to give us the alternative. It is up to them to show us who is going to buy our produce and the products of our factories if we do not go in. It is up to them also to show us how we are going to maintain the standard of living which the workers of this country have now if we do not go in to some association such as the Common Market, which will at least guarantee us a market for the products of our farms and factories. The sooner the Labour Party make up their mind to put all their cards on the table—and not wait till the last moment when they may have done a considerable amount of brain damage to people who might take them seriously—and to change their mind, the better for the country and the better for the movement as a whole.
We have had on this motion a wide ranging debate, with many points of view and many different points of emphasis. It has, I think, despite what was said by one Senator, been representative of public attitude and public opinion. Public attitudes and opinions in regard to this question are wide-ranging. There are many points of view. People tend to take one aspect rather than another and to talk about one aspect to the exclusion of others. In this, our debate has been representative. So far as our debate has been confusing at times, I think it has also been representative of the state of the public mind.
I do not know that we have in these six hours done very much to remedy the situation. We have talked about general consideration. We have talked about special problems. We have had during the debate a good mixture of both of these. Again this, I think, is reflective of the problem because the problem of whether or not we should go into Europe, exactly how we should negotiate, exactly how we should prepare, both in the work place and in our own attitudes, are all things that are affected by general considerations and by special factors.
The first general point that I think we must be clear on, and it was one of the first points mentioned by Senator O'Higgins when opening this debate, is a clear realisation that no matter what our attitude, no matter what our avocation, no matter what our political views, every one of us as Irishmen and Irishwomen are Europeans in our blood and our bones and that we cannot get away from this fact. We tend to lose sight of it because, though one might think looking at the geography of the situation that the island of Britain which lies between us and Europe would be a bridge between Ireland and Europe, we find in fact that Britain is now, as she has always been, a barrier between Ireland and Europe. We have had difficulty, both before we freed ourselves from Britain, and almost as much since we started to use our own freedom, in seeing clearly beyond Britain to Europe. Nevertheless, when we manage to get through that barrier we find that we are Europeans. We find that we have more in common with Europe, and I do not speak only of Western Europe and the Six, than we have with Britain.
I am sure there are Members of this House who have walked the streets of European cities, streets on the European Continent, and felt that it was more like walking the streets of Dublin, Cork or Limerick than one feels when walking the streets of London or Birmingham. We can feel more at home in Europe and we are Europeans. It is not merely the Spanish ale that brought us hope or the French aid or the seas but the fact we are a part of an integral European tradition.
There are fears that if we now link ourselves with the European mainland this would be a repudiation of the ideology that brought us freedom, that this would be to turn our backs ultimately and for the last time upon Sinn Féin. For that reason I think it was appropriate that Senator Andy O'Brien tonight reminded us that, if we go back to the fountainhead of Sinn Féin, go back to the journalist who first brought to the minds of the people this idea of self reliance. If we go back to Arthur Griffith we find him looking for his inspiration in the work of Deák and the Hungarian Freedom Movement of the mid-19th century.
This State was founded on idealism. We are nervous about turning our backs on that idealism. Let us realise, even though Brussels is staffed by capable realists as the Minister well knows, that the Community we seek to join was founded on idealism. The Community we seek to join was based on the dreams of men like Schumann. Because they found a happy marriage of idealism and realism the Community they founded has been a success. Not all the expertise and skills of the polytechnicians and graduates of the higher education institutions of Europe would have been enough to make the Community a success if it had not been founded on idealism.
United Europe is a great ideal. It is this ideal that has brought fundamental strength to the Community and we should not forget this. This may well be the appropriate time when small European countries such as ourselves would have something real to contribute. It may well be that the original Six who signed the Treaty of Rome on the basis of idealism are now so concerned with the minutiae of regulations, so concerned with the working out of detail, that some of the original idealism has been lost. If we go into Europe to accomplish an ideal, then perhaps we can be the inspiration for a renaissance in the idealism of the Community.
Let us realise what we are doing. This is important in regard to the anxieties in regard to NATO, and in regard to neutrality that Senator Horgan spoke about tonight. We do not go into the European Community accepting that the European ideal is a confrontation against the powers of the Warsaw Pact. This is not the idealism that the Community was founded on. The idealism that founded the Community was to put an end to war in Europe. The first phase of that was to bring the 20th-century enemies of two world wars together in one Community. That Community can go on to the ultimate ideal, the Community can ultimately find a basis for unity for those who are ranged against one another in the cold war of the 20th century.
If we look back for the first origins of this ideal, and where the example of co-operation came from, we will come up against the Marshal Plan and to the efforts in 1948 of Europe coming together and putting herself on her feet with the aid of American money. Once again, the money would not have been enough without the aid of the ideal of co-operation. When the Marshal Plan was announced, Czechoslovakia expressed her willingness to join and was only prevented by "Big Brother" from doing so. Now we should look forward not to a Community of The Ten which will stand ranged on the Czechoslovak border and looking across it in enmity, but to a Community of The Ten that will look forward to the day when the Czechoslovak application of 1948 is finally accepted.
Let us be clear that the idealism involved in the idea of a united Europe is not represented by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. When we say that we are prepared to undertake the defence commitments of a European Community we are not pledging our loyalty to NATO. We are saying that the European Community which we wish to join is something worthwhile and therefore worth defending, but it is only worth defending for itself and not defending for any other ideology outside itself.
We must be careful, as the Minister must be careful in his negotiation, to distinguish our attitudes from those of Britain. It may be difficult for Britain to see the difference between the defence of the Community and the problems of NATO, but to us there is a real difference. We are not bound to go to the aid of certain European countries which have not got enough democracy in them to be considered for membership of the Community. Our attitude to them is quite different from that of Britain. We must look beyond Britain to the ideal that lies behind.
I said that the Community has achieved success because of a mixture of idealism and realism and I would be as well not to spend all of my 20 minutes talking about idealism. I will turn to the realistic part which has in a way tended to dominate this debate, as it has dominated the discussion in the country. It is the realism of our economic position. Senator Jack Fitzgerald said that the Fine Gael Party were just as enthusiastic in regard to the Free Trade Area Agreement with Britain as Fianna Fáil were. I do not know what the level of enthusiasm was in the Fianna Fáil Party for that agreement. I certainly know that it was not supported with any real enthusiasm by the Fine Gael Party.
It was not accepted in the sense that we accept the move towards Europe. It was proposed in the other House as being something which had already been agreed with Britain. It was accepted by Fine Gael as the first move towards an early entry into Europe. As such we were prepared to accept it; but looking back on it perhaps we were wrong because it was not the prelude to an early entry and the disadvantages of it were great. The greatest disadvantage was that Britain did not keep the agreement. If she kept it in law she certainly did not keep it in spirit. In our opinion she did not keep it in law either.
Senator Jack Fitzgerald asked if we could be deceived in regard to the Free Trade Agreement with Britain could we not be more deceived in regard to the Community? The answer is "No" because there is a world of difference. The Community is not just an agreement, a treaty or a set of rules. It is based on a treaty that sets up institutions to see that the rules are kept. When Britain in the time of economic necessity decided to break the rules, or, as she would probably say herself, to bend them, she was constituting herself as referee and umpire on that occasion; but she cannot do that to us if we both go into Europe. If we both go into Europe, subject to the European institutions, Britain can never do to us what she did under the Free Trade Area Agreement.
This is the realism, this is what makes the Community worthwhile. The Community is a safer place than the big jungle of the world for small nations like ourselves. It is a place where the big powers have to obey the rules just as much as the little ones. When it comes to the question of a conflict of interest between the large and the small, having the rules and having an impartial umpire is the only chance of fair play for the smaller partner. We must realise that there is a world of difference here between the position under the Free Trade Area and the position in the Community.
We may say that the Community has not done all it might. We can say that it has yet no Community regional policy, that it has not done many things. I think we should look at these things we complain about. Our complaint should not be that the Community has moved in the wrong direction but rather that it has moved too slowly. With regard to matters such as the democratisation of the European Parliament, regional policy, matters of this sort, the Community has certainly moved in the right direction, but, in my opinion, it has not moved fast enough.
So much for the general problems. As I say, we should look at these. To my mind whether we look at them as idealists or as realists the place for Ireland in the future, in my opinion, lies inside the Community. There are many special problems which were raised during the debate. Senator Jessop mentioned the peculiar difficulty that the liberal professions are under in facing this particular future. If I might be permitted, I would like to add a word from the point of view of my own profession. The professions are in great difficulties here because they fall both under the right of establishment and under the right to work. The difficulty of working out their position under the Community rules is very great.
The Minister has offered to put professional bodies in touch with bodies in Brussels. I would like to bring up one point here, very briefly. The Institution of Engineers of Ireland, which is the professional body in this country which controls the engineering profession, has already joined the appropriate European body, FEANI, that is the Federation of National Associations of Engineers, a body that originally was confined to The Six but was open afterwards to anybody who was eligible to be a member of The Six. In fact, the Institution has been carrying the burden of a subscription, the burden of sending delegates to meetings, in order to prepare its own profession for entry into Europe.
I would say to the Minister that there is a case to be made here. While the profession were largely interested in their own position and in their own members they were also fulfilling a national function here, and there is a case that the Minister might support what has been done by individual bodies in this regard. Even though grant-in-aid is something of a dirty word nowadays, I would suggest that the Minister should consider helping bodies who are helping themselves in regard to this adaptation. This is just one of the special points. The problem of the harmonisation of diplomas, which is a very difficult problem was also mentioned and this is true of all the professions.
I would like to come, finally, as a general topic, to a problem which, in spite of what the Minister says, I think really worries him, and this is the problem of information. The Minister has said, and rightly, that if one wishes to oppose the body of official opinion one must inform oneself, but I do not think he is entitled to leave it there. This is a somewhat authoritarian attitude. He is like a scholastic philosopher, who insists that you must accept the conclusions, if you cannot follow the scholastic arguments or if you have not studied the complete problem.
The Senator left out a bit. I gave them the information.
Certainly. I am saying this not in any sense of criticism of what the Minister or his Department have been doing. However, the Minister has admitted he has made available information which is not in very digestible form and which the Minister himself found difficult to assimilate. The Minister and the Government have a duty not only to provide the basic information, not only to pass on the information which is available from Brussels but also to do a certain degree of interpretation.
I know this is asking a good deal at a time of heavy negotiation, when the Minister and the section of his Department dealing with this matter are heavily engaged in these vital negotiations. Nevertheless, I would ask the Minister to accept the fact that more must be done in this regard. Up to now the Irish Council of the European Movement, which has been carrying out excellent work in this regard, as the Minister mentioned in his speech, has I think been quite outstanding among similar bodies in Europe in not receiving substantial Government support. I do not know if in the coming financial year the Minister will be in a position to do anything in this regard but I certainly would urge him to do anything that is possible. Once again the Minister would be able here to act through agents who will add to the financial resources he can make available, an enthusiasm in regard to this issue that is difficult to purchase with money.
With regard to this general problem of information I would like to say another word and again recommend to the Minister's munificence the European Association of Teachers who, this week, are marking their 10th Anniversary. They have through the teaching profession—the whole profession, because this is a body which brings together teachers in primary, secondary, vocational schools and universities—they have, through the teaching fraternity, and through the schools, done an immense amount of good.
We have not discussed today whether or not there should be a referendum. Whether there is a formal referendum with a tá and a níl, it will be a tragic day if we go into Europe without an effective vote of confidence from the Irish people. Unless the people are really convinced, then it will be almost dangerous to go into Europe not bringing the people with us. This is not a matter of constitutional change. This is a matter of what this change means.
I go back to the point I made originally. We must in this venture have the right mixture of idealism and realism. It was on these two that the Community was founded. It is on the basis of these two aspects that we must judge our situation. When we do, I think we must conclude we should enter the Community, that we should enter it with enthusiasm, not merely to accept what has been done but to make our contribution, conscious that it is a real contribution and conscious indeed that here lies economic opportunity and political idealism which may bring back some of the spirit which, as we all know, we have lacked in this country for many years past.
Question put and agreed to.
The Seanad adjourned at 9.50 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 31st March, 1971.