I take this opportunity to welcome the Taoiseach here for this important debate; it is his first visit since he became Taoiseach. We take this opportunity to wish you well in your new role.
Senator Doyle rose.
An Bille um an Aonú Leasú Déag ar an mBunreacht, 1992: An Dara Céim. Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1992: Second Stage.
Tairgeadh an cheist: "Go léifear an Bille an Dara Uair."
Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
Senator Doyle, you are out of order.
Would I be in order if I were to support your words of welcome to the Taoiseach?
I will take support from wherever I get it.
May I say at the outset how pleased I am to be among Senators in this beautifully restored Chamber. The Senate as a body as well as individual Senators make a significant contribution to our democracy and to more enlightened public debate. Its role and usefulness should not be denigrated. Most democratic countries have found that a second chamber is part of the checks and balances that every democracy needs to prevent it from becoming our elected dictatorship. Participation in our public life should be as broadly based as possible, and the Seanad certainly plays a role in that regard.
The text of this Bill to amend our Constitution is simple, straightforward and limited solely to enabling the State to ratify the Treaty of European Union signed at Maastricht on 7 February last and become a member of this Union, as well as enabling the State to ratify the Agreement relating to Community Patents of 15 December 1989, between the member states of the communities.
The form of the amendment is the same as in 1987, except that there is a reference to European Union as well as to the Communities, and to bodies competent under the Community Treaties, such as the European Monetary Institute to be established at Stage 2 of European Monetary Union. The Union consists of three pillars, the Communities, the Common Foreign and Security Policy, and co-operation in the sphere of justice and home affairs.
There have been suggestions that the terms of the constitutional amendment have been drawn too widely and that it should have referred only to "necessitated by the obligations of membership of the Communities", leaving out the two non-Community pillars of the Union. In fact, the wording "necessitated by" is itself restrictive and deliberately so, in order not to confer too open a constitutional protection. It contrasts with the words "consequent on membership", which would be a more open ended alternative. If we are to become members of the European Union, we must be able to undertake the obligations thereof. Otherwise, the country would be blocked from effective participation in the Union. Thus, it is necessary, for ratification, that the constitutional amendment refers to the European Union as well as to the Communities.
The Community Patents Agreement was signed by Ireland in 1989. Because the agreement was concluded inter-governmentally and is thus not necessitated by the obligations of EC membership, provisions which conflict with the supremacy of Irish courts would not be covered under our Constitution. This agreement will provide an easier and less expensive system of registering patents, valid throughout the Community.
The European Union Treaty represents a decisive step in the historical evolution of the Community and in the future shape of Europe as a whole. We are fortunate to be members, able to play a full part in all future developments. The Community and now the Union represents one of the most significant achievements of the 20th century, and poised to play a key role in the 21st century as the most modern, developed form of human organisation.
Ratification will be completed by all our partners before the end of this year, in some cases well ahead of target. Despite some political controversy, no insurmountable problems are foreseen in other member states. It still appears that Denmark will be the only other member state holding a referendum, on 2 June. The Danish Government's campaign has the strong support of industry and business leaders as well as the trade unions and ratification was approved two days ago in the Danish Parliament by 130 votes to 25.
The European Parliament last month urged by a huge majority, EC national Parliaments to ratify the Maastricht Treaty. The Treaty has the support of the ETUC, which represents millions of trade unionists, as well as of employer bodies at EC level, such as UNICE and the CEEP. In that context, I welcome the decision here of SIPTU and the ATGWU, the CII, the Irish Farmers' Association, the ICMSA and Macra na Feirme and many chambers of commerce to urge a "yes" vote.
The largely positive experience of EC membership over the past 20 years should not be obscured by present high unemployment, due mainly to demographic factors. We have experienced, taking the period as a whole, one of the highest EC growth rates. Our per capita income, which has grown by nearly a half in real terms, is now 69 per cent of the EC average instead of 59 per cent in 1973, clear evidence of convergence. We also have 70,000 more people in employment.
Ireland will surely join all our partners and the broad spectrum of opinion across the Community, in supporting the European Union Treaty, to which we will contribute and from which we will benefit. Let me remind Senators of what is principally involved: the provisions on Economic and Monetary Union and a single currency, which are entirely new; continued, unrestricted access for our industrial and agricultural exports to a Single Market of 360 million people, including EFTA countries, and increased opportunities for mobility throughout Europe for our young people; provisions which strengthen cohesion, with firm commitments on issues such as eligibility, rates of aid from the Structural Funds, the easing of additionality requirements, plus a reduced burden of contributions to the Community budget for less prosperous member states in the Protocol on Cohesion; the establishment of a new Cohesion Fund for the four less prosperous member states; the strengthening of existing areas for Community action such as R & D, environment and social policy; new provisions on education, culture, health, trans-European networks, industry, consumer protection and European citizenship; strengthened co-operation in the fight against drugs, fraud, international crime; strengthened co-operation on foreign and security policy, giving us greater influence than we could have on our own, and which will enhance the capacity of the Union to contribute to peace and stability in Europe and in the wider world; and improved decision making procedures, and a larger role for the European Parliament.
The White Paper provides a comprehensive and factual outline of what is in the Treaty. There is a thorough and objective analysis and assessment of the implications and benefits for this country. We have started to distribute to every household a brief, simple guide to the Treaty and the issues involved.
EMU is the natural extension of the Single Market. Increased co-ordination of economic policies and the development of a single monetary policy and a single currency under European Monetary Union are required, if the full benefits of the Single Market are to be realised.
Irish firms are already successfully meeting the challenge of the Single Market. This is of much greater importance for us than most member states. Our EC partners take over 75 per cent of our exports, which represent 42 per cent of our national output, three times the Community average, and we have a £2.5 billion surpus with them.
The Economic and Social Research Institute in a recent report concluded that European Monetary Union, taken together with the Single Market Programme and the Structural Funds due up to 1993 could raise GNP by an extra 7 to 8 per cent by the year 2000 and increase net employment by an extra 55,000. As a direct result of European Monetary Union, substantially more young people will be able to find jobs in Ireland.
Increased co-ordination of economic policies under European Monetary Union will be implemented by means of mutual surveillance and rules on budget deficits and their financing. The debt criterion would be breached only if the stock of debt exceeded 60 per cent of GDP and was not sufficiently diminishing towards this figure. The ECOFIN Council concluded last February that Ireland, at that time, fulfilled all the criteria for the move to the final stage of European Monetary Union. The targets set in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress indicate a firm resolve to maintain that position.
EMU would not mean "hairshirt budgets", higher taxes and cutbacks. On the contrary, we will simply need to continue to pursue the successful budgetary policies of the last few years, restraining borrowing, cutting taxes, and maintaining public services. If we were to vote "no", public expenditure would have to be cut severely, including inevitably social spending; many projects would have to be cancelled; and taxes would have to be raised. Interest rates and mortgage rates would rise substantially, with adverse effects on investment, debt service costs and the building industry.
If we want to see our road network improved, our railways maintained, and a modern public transport system provided for Dublin, if we want more college places, if we want proper and permanent income supports for our farmers, if we want greater rural development, if we want more comprehensive programmes and training for the unemployed, if we want the Social Charter implemented, then we will need additional funds. Social problems, like emigration from rural areas in the West, or high urban unemployment, will be difficult to tackle without increased resources. The gross European contribution to this year's budget alone is £2,200 million. In net terms we get £6 for every £1 we contribute, the highest ratio for any member state. Where could much of this be replaced if we voted "no"?
The Commission propose to double the assistance going to the four less prosperous member states from the Structural and Cohesion Funds taken together. Of course, it is not certain that we will get the full amount of the proposed increase but we expect it to be there or thereabouts. This is not yet settled and tough negotiations lie ahead. We will rest our case for our full share on our continuing development lag as compared with richer regions, our very high level of unemployment and on our productive use of funds to date, which have resulted in an otherwise greatly improved economic performance. We would not get access to the Cohesion Fund provided for in the Treaty if we vote "no". That is certain. We would not be able to maximise our share of the expected substantial increase in the Structural Funds, some of which would go to other poorer countries. Indeed, a "no" vote would undermine some of the case for the size of increase that has been proposed. We were faced with a similar doubtful situation in 1987. We had to vote in a referendum on the Single European Act when the Commission's proposal for doubling of the Fund was still in the early stages of discussion.
Much has been made of British and German opposition to this size of increase. Britain has been traditionally opposed, but in 1988 it did not at the end of the day withhold agreement. The German attitude, while often extremely reserved, is in the last analysis dictated by a broad statesmanlike view of what European unity requires. Last December at Maastricht Chancellor Kohl played a positive role in persuading Britain to accept, however reluctantly, the new Cohesion Fund, despite the financial burden of German unity. State Secretary Koehler of the German Finance Ministry argued recently that the poorer member countries needed flanking support to reduce differences in development, a process from which all would profit. He strongly defended the Cohesion Fund as creating better conditions for private investment. He then cited as a specific example a structurally weak country like Ireland, which had not misused its Structural Funds at others' expense, but had brought its budget deficit down dramatically since 1986. In the domestic German debate on their difficult budgetary situation, the agreements at Maastricht are treated as one of the additional financial obligations that has to be met, not as something that can be seriously disputed.
Any suggestion that Ireland will not be a full member in future of the Single Market and of the Union would cause a major loss of investment confidence with devastating consequences for jobs. Who would invest to cater for a market of 3.5 million people, when opportunities abound elsewhere in a market 100 times that size?
The EC has always been socially progressive, but especially so in recent years. The social dimension is seen as an essential adjunct to the Single Market. Ireland did not opt out of the Social Charter.
At the Strasbourg European Council in December 1989, eleven of the Twelve member states adopted the "Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights of Workers". The charter is a political statement of intent and covers areas such as the right of freedom of association, equal pay, working conditions and conditions of employment. Early in 1990 the Commission launched an action programme to implement it. Because of slow progress, the Government joined at Maastricht with ten other member states in an Agreement on Social Policy, which increases the Community's capacity to act on social matters. The agreement is linked to the Treaty by a Protocol, in which all Twelve member states agree that, for the purposes of the agreement, the Eleven will have full access to all the institutional machinery of the Community, including the Court of Justice.
This agreement among the Eleven on social policy, along with Britain's opt-out clause in European Monetary Union, provides an interesting example of what a group of member states can do if they wish to go ahead with the development of European Union. It requires no great imagination to see this precise arrangement as a model to implement the Treaty on European Union, if Ireland does not ratify. Another clear example was in 1979, when we joined the exchange rate mechanism of the EMS and Britain stayed out.
The Community has been a very positive influence in promoting women's rights in relation to equal pay, equal opportunities and equal treatment in the social welfare system. Indeed, we are still paying the bill for the failure of a previous Government to honour their EC obligations to women in 1984 to 1986. I am confident that the women of Ireland will ensure by a "yes" vote that they will not be downgraded to second class European citizens.
The Community has been very positive with regard to the rights of workers, encouraging participation in decision making, protecting health and safety at work, and generally encouraging social partnership. Access to the European job market will be increasingly important, regardless of economic conditions, for our young people, providing them with opportunities for mobility and job experience and acquisition of working languages. Over 22,000 students in regional technical colleges and vocational education committee colleges receive direct grants, and 1,000 research students will benefit this year from ERASMUS grants for study abroad. FÁS programmes, which will have trained over 200,000 people from 1989-93, also receive indispensable EC funding.
The European Union Treaty expressly incorporates the objective to sustainable growth and strengthens the competence of the Community in the environment area. Environment policy will aim at a high level of protection to be integrated into other Community policies, and at promoting measures at international level to deal with regional or worldwide environmental problems. Our whole environment strategy in Ireland to the end of the century is underpinned by the Community. It is recognised that environmental problems know no frontiers. The EC have the resources and the capacity to help deal with the appalling environmental legacy from 40 years of State socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, and to make out of date nuclear power stations safe.
Last week in the Dáil I pointed out that there was qualified support among many of the European Green Parties for the European Union Treaty. I am very glad to note today that according to the recent IMS opinion poll, 52 per cent of Irish Green supporters are committed to vote in favour of ratification and only 13 per cent against. If the Green Party of all parties are not in touch with their own grass roots, what is their purpose?
Another very important provision in the Treaty is the establishment of a new Cohesion Fund, which implicitly acknowledges that Community environmental policy is heavily influenced by the pollution problems of the more developed regions. Measures to combat this can be relatively higher in cost and lower in benefit for less developed countries such as Ireland. There will now be a means of bridging the gap between what is desirable from a Community perspective and what is affordable in the least developed regions. This Fund is the first significant EC fund specially dedicated to the implementation of EC policy on the environment, and we will exploit it to the fullest extent possible to achieve the targets we have set in the Government's environmental action programme.
The Cold War is over. The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact have been dissolved. No longer do two hostile alliances face each other on European territory. Former enemies are now engaged in a search for new forms and structures of co-operation that will maintain peace on our continent.
Ireland has a fundamental interest in this. Our welfare and prosperity are vitally linked to a peaceful and stable Europe. It is where we trade and do our business. It would be foolish to take peace in Europe for granted. Working for it is one of the principal motivations that lie behind the provisions on common foreign and security policy in the Treaty on European Union.
Those who portray the Treaty as a militaristic agreement and the European Union as an aggressive organisation fail to understand the nature of the Treaty and the changed context in which discussions on foreign and security issues are taking place. Do they know, for example that all the former members of the Warsaw Pact, including Russia, have formed a new arrangement with NATO to develop a co-operative council and that the countries of Eastern Europe are entering into similar co-operative arrangements with the Western European Union? Do they understand the significance of the fact that Austria, Sweden and Finland — all countries that, like Ireland, remained outside the military alliances of the Cold War era have accepted the common foreign and security policy and are prepared to work its provisions when they join?
Membership of the European Community has given Ireland a role and a say in European and international affairs far greater than we would have had if we were acting alone. It has allowed us to pursue an active and effective foreign policy with the other democratic states of Western Europe, to work for disarmament to promote human rights, to further international law as the basis for relations between States and to contribute to conflict resolution in areas of tension. All this has been done without compromising our basic ideals or approaches in international affairs. On the contrary, the Community has provided a vehicle for the active promotion of these ideals through a framework based on accepted rules, discussion and unanimous agreement.
The common foreign and security policy does not involve joint action by the European Union in the military area. It will not oblige Ireland to join a military alliance. It does not establish a common defence policy or a European army. What it is does provide for another intergovernmental conference to allow for further discussions and negotiations on a common defence policy in 1996. The outcome of that conference would have to be agreed unanimously and any Treaty changes ratified by the member states. In our case this would involve another constitutional referendum here.
Throughout the world the Community is seen as a force for peace and progress. Countries and groupings are anxious to establish economic ties and political dialogue with the Twelve. In Eastern Europe, in the States of the former Soviet Union, in Africa and in South and Central America the Community is actively involved in promoting economic development and political progress, and in several areas of conflict or tension, such as Yugoslavia, the Middle East and South Africa, the Community's presence is welcomed as a voice for peace and human rights.
Ireland cannot, should not, stand aside or opt out of these developments. As a State and as a people we have made a worthwhile contribution to international life. We have done so by being actively and self-confidently involved — whether it be the contribution of individuals in teaching, health care and famine relief or our organised involvement at the United Nations, through UN peace-keeping, at the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe and in European Political Co-operation, where we have helped to share the policy of the Twelve on such diverse issues as the Middle East, South Africa and Central America. We can do the same through the new Treaty on European Union.
The Treaty also expands and formalises the Community role in development co-operation, and the budget proposals for 1993-97 propose increased aid, which Irish development agencies such as Trocaire and Concern will help channel to developing countries.
A particularly welcome feature of the Treaty is that it gives the Community — in Article 128 — a new competence in the area of culture. Ireland was very actively involved in developing this Article. Essentially what is now provided is a legal basis, hitherto lacking, for the Community to make a contribution to cultural development, while at the same time respecting national and regional diversity. A very useful provision is also included which will help protect member states' cultures from the rigours of the Internal Market. As a small country with many competing demands on our limited public finances we, in Ireland, have much to gain from this new potential for drawing on the resources of the Community in support of our cultural activity of European significance.
Reflecting its directly elected status and the increase in Community competences, the role of the European Parliament will be considered strengthened under the new Treaty. First, it is granted the right — under the so called new co-decision procedure — to reject proposed legislation in a number of areas such as the Internal Market, education, culture, trans-European networks, research and development and the environment. The procedure also provides for a conciliation committee bringing together the Council and the Parliament in the endeavour to reach agreement. Second, the areas where the assent of the Parliament is required, at present confined to association agreements and accession of new member states to the Community, will be extended and will now include also the appointment of the Commission, the arrangements for a uniform electoral system for direct elections to the Parliament itself, and the settling of the tasks, objectives and organisation of the Structural Funds. Thirdly, the Parliament's role will be enhanced by a formal right of inquiry on alleged contraventions or maladministration, the capacity to receive petitions from Community citizens, and the right to call on the Commission to initiate legislation where it considers Community action is required. Fourth, Parliament will be able to appoint a Community Ombudsman to examine maladministration by the Community's institutions.
These arrangements involve a significant reinforcement of the Parliament's position and influence but do not upset the balance between the institutions. The Council retains a strong role, as is desirable, so that the Irish Government will retain the degree of influence necessary to ensure that specific Irish interests are safeguarded and advanced.
On the whole, the European Parliament has been positive in relation to the principal Irish concerns. It is also the case that the stronger the role of the Council, the stronger may sometimes be the influence of member states who oppose proposals which Ireland supports. Nevertheless, at the present stage of integration, there is a need for certainty in regard to the ability to pursue Irish interests. Our participation in the Council gives that certainty and, on the whole, I believe that we have the balance right for the present.
Senators will also, no doubt, be pleased to note that the role of national parliaments in the scrutiny of Community legislation is to be reinforced, that steps are to be taken to ensure that national parliaments are better informed on EC matters, and that meetings are to be arranged periodically between representatives of the national parliaments and the European Parliament.
I have not been able to enter into detail on many important subjects, which Senators on the Government side and, no doubt, other Senators will deal with in much greater depth. I would like, however, to make this point. There is absolutely no issue of conscience involved in either supporting this legislation or in voting "yes" in the referendum on European Union itself. The argument that ratification would have any adverse impact on any aspect of fundamental rights is based on bad advice, and impugns the good faith of our EC partners who have made very clear in the recent Declaration, which has a certain legal status that, apart from certain existing rights in European law, they wish to leave this area entirely to ourselves. Where problems have arisen, they have arisen entirely from internal causes, not from any external source, and we retain the full freedom guaranteed by our EC partners to resolve them internally. It is a matter of regret to me, judging from correspondence I and other Members of the Oireachtas have received, that a small number of people are being misled and badly advised about how they should vote on the basis of spurious legal arguments. There is a moral duty to make the position plain, that the fundamental rights in question are not affected by the European Union Treaty. Such clarification was given in 1987 during the debate on the Single European Act when similar concerns were raised. The European Union Treaty is far too important to Ireland to be used as a lever for obtaining other objectives, and that is recognised by the vast majority of sensible people on all sides.
The European Union Treaty represents an important achievement as well as a valuable opportunity for this country. From what other source could we expect brighter prospects for the future? How else could we ever hope to achieve in due course average European living standards coupled with the highest quality of life? Where else will we find the market to underpin jobs and investment? What other route offers greater hope for peace and stability both in Ireland and Europe transcending the historic conflicts of the past?
I look forward to a strong campaign concentrated on the key issues. I would like this House to join in giving a clear signal that Ireland is determined to remain in the forefront of future European development. A good result would enhance the status of Ireland in Europe and at the future negotiating table. I am confident the Treaty will receive the support of an overwhelming majority of the Irish people.
At the outset I would like to extend a warm welcome to An Taoiseach on his first visit to the Seanad as Leader of our Government. I thank him for his speech and the explanation he has given the House this morning.
The unification of all Europe must be the central objective of Irish foreign policy and I am confident that Irish Governments will hold this view. The Irish people must ratify this Treaty and in so doing look with confidence to a better future, not just in economic terms but in the areas of peace and justice also. We must be vigilant that, on its ratification, the spirit of this Treaty which is so soundly based on the dearest aspirations of the founding fathers Schumann, de Gasperi with Paul Henry Spaak, Jean Monnet, Adenauer and many others, as exemplified in the Treaty of Rome, is maintained. Our generation, as represented by the Taoiseach and his Government, must be careful that in implementing the Treaty its spirit is not diluted. National small-mindedness from whatever country must not be allowed to negative this progress. I share the view that Ireland should be to the fore in building an even greater and wider Europe through the CSCE.
I believe that we should vote "Yes" for this Maastricht Treaty. First, a united and independent Europe will be a more peaceful place than a divided one. Second, a single European currency will make it easier for trading nations like ours to grow and to provide employment. As full members of a multi-cultural Europe, our own culture will flourish, our horizons will expand and our self-confidence must surely grow. This Maastricht Referendum should not be used by anyone to register a protest against the Government on other issues. There will, I am sure, be a general election within the next number of months and that will be the right time for people to deal with the Government's inadequacies.
The Government parties should, of course, have dealt with travel and information rights before the Maastricht Referendum but they decided not to do so and they have a majority. We must now work with that decision, rash and unnecessary though it may be. The Government tried to amend the Irish Protocol and failed. I would like to ask the Taoiseach why, in a Treaty which we are told is purely economic, a non-economic Protocol was the only one that was deemed necessary. I believe that the Solemn Declaration binds the Irish Government to introducing a constitutional amendment to deal with travel and information issues. This is not a domestic matter but an international commitment. The Government cannot run away from it. They already have the majority in the Houses so there is no need to postpone the referendum until November as has been suggested.
We must come to deal with the broader issues arising from the Supreme Court judgment in a compassionate and considered way. We do not need a debate in which people take sides on a simplistic formula. This is an issue on which we should act, for once, as a genuine Legislature. Every Member must be allowed to tease out the alternatives openly, honestly and freely without the constraint imposed by any artificial consensus from any quarter. This should be a place for listening as well as for talking. In the meantime, let us deal with the Maastricht Treaty on its merits.
Last week Deputy John Bruton, speaking on this issue, said:
We should vote "Yes" because the Maastricht Treaty is a stepping stone to something much greater. We should not be afraid to sketch out our long term vision for Europe. My vision is of a Europe with a genuine federal budget, automatic transfers from richer to poorer regions, an elected European senate on the US model to protect smaller states, and a democratically accountable European Government elected directly by the Lower House of the European Parliament.
I would like to see the competence of this European Government and Parliament distinguished from those of national governments and parliaments in a simple and clear European Constitution. There is a great deal of overlap between European and national responsibilities.
I believe that Deputy Bruton set a very clear target for the greater democratisation of Europe and the European Community. Many people in this country are confused trying to understand what exactly Maastricht is. It is very difficult to explain it, if one does not start with the Treaty of Rome which was signed in Rome in 1957; the Treaty takes its name from the venue where the document was signed. Similarly, this year on 7 February, this new Treaty, which amends the original, was signed in Maastricht in the Netherlands and it takes its name from that city. It is nothing more than an amendment of the Treaty of Rome. We will take one of the very important Articles of the Treaty of Rome. Article 4 reads:
The tasks entrusted to the Community shall be carried out by the following institutions, an Assembly, a Council, a Commission and a Court of Justice.
In the new Article 4 the tasks entrusted to the Community shall be carried out by the following institutions — a European Parliament, a Council, a Commission, a Court of Justice and a Court of Auditors. We will look again at Article 3, the original Treaty:
For the purposes set out in Article 2, the activities of the Community shall include, as provided in this Treaty and in accordance with the timetable set out therein: (a) the elimination, as between member states, of customs duties and of quantitative restrictions on the import and export of goods, and of all other measures having equivalent effect; (b) the establishment of a common customs tariff and of a common commercial policy towards third countries; (c) the aboliton, as between member states, of obstacles to freedom of movement for persons, services and capital; (d) the adoption of a common policy in the sphere of agriculture; (e) the adoption of a common policy in the sphere of transport;
The new Article 3 relates to the activities of the new unified Europe which are greatly enhanced and significantly developed. The time allocated to this House to debate this very comprehensive and important subject — a Treaty that the Taoiseach this morning told us is of the utmost importance — is completely inadequate. The three hours that we are being told are being allocated for Committee Stage is inadequate to discuss the various Articles so that Members can contemplate the changes being proposed. This is one of the areas where the Government are making a mistake because there is nothing in the proposed Treaty which will take from the independence, security and prospects of the Irish citizen. I regret that the Government and the Leader of the House have found it necessary to curtail the opportunity that Members would expect to discuss the various problems as perceived as between the Treaty of Rome and the Maastricht Treaty.
Over the past 20 years our island economy has suffered because of the Northern Ireland problem. Patriotism, nationalism and sovereignty are all about territory, not about people. I believe European Union is about the economic advancement and security of people. The idealism that created the European Economic Community was a message of peace and, very clearly, a message of reconciliation. It was the answer to the differences. It looked for respect and not for hate. The new and united Europe respects diversity and people; it respects the diversity of people, cultures and tradition. European political union will transform sovereignty and will make a declaration that the past is over and that on this island we should strive to model our relationships on this European example. We must reach agreement on how to live together, North and South. We must face the challenge of the Single Market economy. The idea of going it alone is completely out of date and has nothing to offer our people. We must look to the Europe of the regions. We must explore every possibility to create our own economic advancement.
It is important to remind ourselves that we are moving closer to a market of 323 million people. We must face that competition but we must be very conscious of the fact that we are on the periphery of that market. I look to our Ministers to ensure that the difficulties will be compensated for adequately, difficulties under which we trade, export and compete because of our peripheral location will be compensated for adequately. There must be greater emphasis on rural development which should become a key factor. We must develop not only our agriculture and food industries but also non-food crops, alternative sources of energy and be at all times conscious that persons must be prepared to work not just for this country but for Europe as well. Patriotism, 1992 style is not about spilling blood but sweat. If we are going to take advantage of our situation here, we must at all times be environmentally conscious.
We must follow a new path of national self-expression within the new Europe. This new European Union offers an umbrella of co-operation atop the existing European Community. We must fully endorse and validate this Union through the referenda and participate in a Union which holds out promise for Irish citizens.
We are not being asked on 18 June to vote for a super state, a united states of Europe, but for political structures offering us additional citizenship of a Europe whole and free, the beginning of a big idea that people should feel confident voting for.
The Taoiseach, this morning underlined the importance of the proposals. He said:
The European Union Treaty represents a decisive step in the historical evolution of the Community and in the future shape of Europe as a whole and we are fortunate to be members able to play a full part in all future developments. The Community and the new Union represent one of the most significant achievements in the 20th century and is poised to play a key role in the 21st century as the most modern development form of human organisation.
That paragraph sums up a glossy aspiration of what European Union might achieve. The views and aspirations of EC founding fathers given what we have achieved since 1957 in peace, stability and economic development in Europe, especially in the original Six member states emerging from post-war reconstruction, have been accomplished, as I hope will be the aspirations of the Taoiseach as enunciated in that paragraph.
I would like to have been able to go through the main sections of the Treaty of Rome and compare them with its proposed amendment in the Maastricht Treaty, but this morning's time allocation makes that impossible. We need to identify the sections of the Treaty to which we can look for support, encouragement, development and job creation and seek explanations for some of the problems set out before us.
Article 4.2 of the Maastricht Treaty says:
The Council and the Commission shall be assisted by an Economic and Social Committee and a Committee of the Regions acting in an advisory capacity.
In no discussion about the Treaty over the last eight or nine months have I heard reference to a committee of the regions. In 1976 when the Regional Fund was adopted the then European Commissioner, George Thompson, now Lord Dundee, had a difficult battle trying to get the concept of "additionality" accepted. As far as our country was concerned he failed utterly. When the new Cohesion Fund is initiated I do not believe that regions or indeed Houses of the Oireachtas, will have any say in where funds will be allocated. It will be the prerogative of the Department of Finance to order priorities as to where Cohesion Funds go.
I would like to ask the Minister for the Government's views on the setting up of a committee of the regions, albeit in an advisory capacity. What type of person would be included among the advisers? If we are to advance economically and avail of the promise held out to us in this new amendment to the Rome Treaty, we must consider ourselves part of an active region. That means that regional funds must become available and their allocation must be according to priorities expressed by people expected to benefit from those funds. We must not allow regional funds to continue as a substitute for capital budget as has been the case for the last 14 or 15 years. It is a disappointment to local authorities that they have no say or input into financial allocation.
This new Treaty places greater emphasis on regionalisation. The entire Treaty is being sold almost to the electorate on the prospect of £6 billion being made available over the next three or four years for infrastructural improvements here. This is the time for the Government to explain their proposals and ideas on regionalisation. We are approaching a new exciting era but I do not think we are sufficiently provided for or adequately prepared. Transport infrastructures, while they account for 17 or 19 per cent of GNP are completely underrated. If you were to accept CIE proposals for the upgrading of their rail network from the west across to Dublin Port or wherever the cost would be enormous. An upgraded network would bypass provincial towns and provide a first class rail service to exporters from the provinces. We need a more positive approach to regional transport. Irish transport is in a mess.
The budget for county councils this year has been cut back by £600,000 compared with last year. Roads are not up to an adequate standard. Trains travel at 35 and 40 miles per hour from the west because the permanent way is not safe, and safety is important. Shannon and the gateway there present major problems.
That is no problem.
It will be.
I am glad the Senator is in favour of closing it.
That is not what I said.
It is a problem which diverts business away from adjacent areas. It is time the Government adopted some sort of transportation policy because it will not be possible to compete and supply prime quality Irish products to the golden triangle of Europe unless we have an adequate transport infrastructure. We cannot isolate transport into one sector. We need the best possible facilities at the most economic price. It is not good enough for Senator Honan, to say that there are no problems when I have seen 400 or 500 people marching outside the House on the question of the closure of Shannon Airport.
Regionalisation is addressed in Article 4 of the Treaty. The rest of Europe acknowledges the importance of regionalisation and we have not even mentioned it in this debate.
On the question of social policy and on the environment there is room for considerable improvement and greater committal to allay the fears of groups agitating for women's rights, equal opportunities and rights for the disabled, none of whom are highlighted in this debate. There is a constituency out there entitled to a greater share of the prosperity we are promised by this Union. I look forward to the Minister's reply and hope it will allay fears expressed by many Members here.
Another question not dealt with sufficiently is the European Parliament. We are told and we accept that this Union is one of the greatest economic steps this country has been asked to take since we decided to enter the EC in 1972, yet there has been no word from Members of the European Parliament who must be closely involved in the debate. I am disappointed that we did not have an opportunity — either in the Dáil or Seanad — of hearing the views of our colleagues in the European Parliament. It is possible to hear guest speakers in the Seanad under the new rules as amended and it is time we had the views of our 15 members in the European Parliament. It would be useful to have an input from them now and to hear their views for or against the greater unification of Europe.
The first institution set up under the Treaty of Rome — the European Parliament — has no input into our debate on the amended Maastricht Treaty. That is a sore disappointment which only serves one small group of people, that is, the Council and the Irish Ministers who serve on the various Councils in Europe. That is a negative approach to this progressive step we are proposing to undertake.
I and the Fine Gael Party would encourage the Irish electors on 18 June to come out single-mindedly and vote for the economic development of Europe through a closer union of the states of Europe. This would ensure the co-operation of the peoples of Europe in providing for the improvement of living and working conditions and ensure that Ireland will be in the vanguard continuing to seek peace and harmony across Europe. It is all too easy to try to solve economic or political problems through war — we see what is happening in Eastern Europe at present and it is not satisfactory; it is easier to fight in Houses of Parliament.
I strongly recommend that the people vote "yes".
I am glad to have the opportunity to address this important subject and I am delighted the Taoiseach came into the House this morning to develop his range of ideas on the Treaty of European Union. It shows the concern of the Government to start the debate and get it out of the Houses of the Oireachtas and onto the streets. He emphasised that the Treaty is of extreme importance to the Oireachtas and to the Irish people.
It has been said that we should have more time to discuss the Maastricht Treaty, but if everybody addresses their own aspect of the Treaty and that is reported the public will receive adequate information on the proposals contained in the Treaty. It is essential that people be informed on the content of the Treaty and in a manner which is easily understood. Simple messages should be conveyed.
The passing of the Referendum to ratify the Maastricht Treaty is of vital necessity if we are to progress politically, socially and economically in the years to come. There is a great need to develop with our European partners an even closer union than we have had up to now. The Treaty provides the means to realise the ideal of European Union and further strengthens our association with EC colleagues started by the Referendum in 1972 and confirmed decisively in 1987.
There are many people in Ireland who have to be convinced that the passing of the Maastricht Treaty does not involve bringing abortion into Ireland. All but the most biased would have to agree that the special Protocol negotiated by the Government which confirmed that the Treaty would have no effect on the application in Ireland of the "right to life" Article in the Constitution, gives the lie to the myth that abortion is an issue addressed by the Union Treaty.
Ireland is an island and like all islands needs the sustenance of its neighbour states for its commercial success. Over the past number of years we have had considerable success as a manufacturing and export nation and we have enjoyed massive benefits in the agricultural sector and in industry, education and all areas impinging on life in Ireland.
We must continue to protect the interest of our rural dwellers and this can only be done from inside an expanded European Union. Farmer incomes can only be protected in the long term if we accept the challenges of full EC membership. The EC Structural Funds of £3 billion in the current phase are to be raised, I hope, dramatically to the £6 billion, mentioned several times over the past number of months. This will give us an opportunity to compete as equal partners in the huge market of 340 to 360 million people in Europe. I am not terribly worried whether £6 billion is the correct figure. Whether £5 billion or £7 billion it does not make any difference. We are looking for an increased tranche of money from Europe.
For many years Irish exporters and importers have had to contend with huge physical barriers in their trading, not only the barriers of distance from main markets but restrictions arising from our peripheral location. We have barriers of paperwork, tariffs, of different taxation systems, etc. It has been estimated that the cost to industry of all these barriers could be in the region of 8 to 9 per cent which, if eliminated, would give major benefits to Irish business and increase our competitive position in Europe and in other major marketplaces. This would begin to bring down our unacceptable level of unemployment.
It is unfortunate that those who oppose the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty do so from a completely negative viewpoint giving every reason for non-compliance but no alternative strategies which would offer hope for the future and confidence that education, health and social welfare standards could be improved and enhanced and well paid and satisfying work provided. Most of these people are well intentioned but there are among them people who oppose social progress and want to retain the status quo. They fear modernisation and change and without change, modernisation and progress horrendous stagnation could envelop this country. Many of them, in the words of American analysis, are caught up in the paralysis and continue to analyse the problems but never come up with solutions. They prefer to criticise rather than to act. If these energies were expended in job creation or in ehancing the quality of life in Ireland there would be dramatic results.
We need to ratify Maastricht and it has been proposed by the ERSI that the combined effect of EC support and the Single European Market could raise our GNP by 7 to 8 per cent, higher than it would be otherwise, by the year 2000. This could give an estimated increase in net employment of 50,000. A net increase of 50,000 jobs is a massive increase which we badly need and must aspire to.
There is a great need to close the gap between the richest areas of Europe and those which are not yet full beneficiaries of economic expansion. I do not subscribe to the idea that there will ever be full economic equality in Europe as certain areas will always enjoy physical advantages, richer natural resources and huge cities which create their own natural marketplaces not hindered by the barriers of distance and access. Existing benefits to Ireland will be increased and new ones added. Under the Single European Act Structural Funds were doubled. These funds accelerated our development by financing industry and tourism, vocational training, road systems, ports and many other projects.
Maastricht builds two new requirements into the EC commitment which are of major importance to Ireland. There will be a binding Treaty requirement that the objective of closing the gap between richer and poorer countries must be taken into account when all EC policies are being drawn up and acted upon. From now on the EC Commission must regularly report on progress made in closing the gap and make follow-up proposals to ensure objectives are realised. The follow-up measures could include entirely new supports. The new Cohesion Fund does strengthen the EC's commitment to closing the prosperity gap and, therefore, will be restricted to Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain. The new fund will be increasingly important in the provision of trans-European networks and I am delighted to see the enormous provision of funds for the new bridge to Europe at Belview near Waterford and County Kilkenny where work has started on the most modern container port in Europe. The possibility of another major port development in the Shannon Estuary was mentioned recently by the Taoiseach.
I agree with what Senator McDonald said about our road system which is in urgent need of improvement and should serve our major ports and airports. We now have a reasonable road system connecting Dublin, Belfast and Waterford; a reasonable road system connects Waterford and Cork, and the north-west has a good coast road, but we need to allocate a considerable amount of money to building a roadway which would take major traffic from the new Belview Port through Kilkenny into the midlands and across to the west.
There is a need to upgrade our rail system completely and we must improve access transport into Ireland. I wonder if the row about Shannon and Dublin is a political one between the west and the east. The value of Shannon to the west has to be taken into account in any changes made in transport policy regarding the proposed overflying of Shannon. Shannon Airport has played and will continue to play, a major part in the development not only of the west but of the east and midland areas.
In an important section of the Treaty there is a commitment to evaluate how existing Structural Funds are working. This will include a review of the amount of funds required to close the prosperity gap. In the past not enough time was spent evaluating how funds have been spent here or elsewhere. A huge amount of EC money has gone into FÁS courses and the development of FÁS training schemes. The same level of evaluation is not applied to these courses as to educational areas such as second and third level education where results are monitored by an end of year examination. If we are running courses for people who are unemployed, or if we are training people to get back into the marketplace, we must look at whether the courses are successful. If they are not successful in putting people back into the workplace, they should be discontinued.
It is gratifying that under the Treaty there will be greater flexibility in the allocation of funds. New education schemes will be included. We will no longer be obliged to put up matching funds before qualifying for support. Up to now many worthwhile projects could not proceed until the Exchequer made matching funds available.
A major extension of EC co-operation will come with Maastricht in the areas of education, vocational and youth training. EC activity will be greatly extended, particularly in adding a European dimension to education, encouraging mobility of both students and teachers and helping to adapt to industrial changes through vocational training. This is an area which must be strengthened, and was addressed in the recently published Green Paper on education.
We recently read in the Culliton Report that "the perception of many managers in Ireland that there is not a skill shortage may itself be part of the skills problem facing Irish industry". The skills gap is the one which exists between skill levels in firms in Ireland and that of the best firms in competitor countries. A major effort must be made to close the competitor skills gap. A well trained workforce is a key element to the competitiveness of industry and business generally. Firms must ensure that their workers' skills are regularly upgraded and updated to meet the changing needs of the firm. Workers must be assisted and encouraged to develop their overall skills to enable them to progress and contribute to their own development and to the development of the economy.
Training is also the key to help the long term unemployed and disadvantaged gain a foothold in the labour market. They must be provided with training opportunities which will give them qualifications recognised on the domestic and European labour markets. Many of the service industries which use skilled labour are not able to recruit them as not enough companies have been training apprentices in recent years. There are many reasons for this, but the major one is the cost of training off the job and the lack of proper vocational training at lower levels. I welcome the initiative of the Department of Labour in changing the apprenticeship scheme to a standard reached rather than the existing time served basis.
If industry is to progress skilled people must be trained and to do this, there must be a return to vocational schooling at secondary and third level. We have too many classes based on academic achievement leading to non-technical degrees or examinations, whereas the great need is for skilled training which is orientated towards the world of work. The new arrangements for the future of the apprenticeship system will be supplemented by the new jobs training scheme. Both employers and trade unions are fully supportive of all efforts to develop on-the-job training systems financed by the employer and the EC. The scheme is a worked based training programme provided by employers, on their premises, in co-operation with FÁS. This goes back to the idea where people were trained on the job and become very proficient. Then we changed, to the system of off-the-job training in colleges, regional colleges in particular. As an employer of skilled people I have found that people were much better on the theory than on the practical side. In many cases those who had been through the off-the-job training establishments were not as good as those who had on-the-job training. In my view, we should go back to that scheme. Trainees must follow a structured and supervised programme of training in a work base, tailored to their own individual needs.
When we are campaigning for the referendum we must stress that the Treaty contains a very powerful social dimension which will ensure that their interests continue to be advanced. The Treaty provisions and the consequential Community actions to help employment promotion are, of course, of primary interest to secure the creation of new jobs, the preservation of existing jobs and the promise of better prospects for those who are unemployed to get back into employment. In addition, the Treaty contains provisions which are clearly intended to continue the upward development in employment standards to which workers are entitled.
A major challenge in the New Europe will be increased co-operation between EC countries in the area of emigration and asylum, the fight against drugs, the prevention of fraud, judicial co-operation in civil and criminal law and cooperative by police and customs to combat international crime. We in Ireland, do not have the major problem of immigration experienced on continental Europe, but we must co-operate to ensure that these countries are protected from what could be a virtual flood of emigrants fleeing from the deprivation on the African continent. With our European partners, we must ensure that not only is there increased prosperity in Europe but that more and more funds are given to Third World countries to allow them to develop and sustain their people in their own lands. If we do not do that, hordes of unemployed and deprived will come from Africa and we will be able to do very little because of the huge numbers involved. It must be remembered that because of its colonisation policies, Europe has been the cause of 90 per cent of the deprivation on the African Continent where they decimated agriculture and left nothing behind except poverty in countries like the Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and elsewhere.
We have seen a huge increase in the number of drug related crimes in Ireland. More and more resources are needed to fight this most hideous trade. The Garda drugs unit and our customs officials have to be complimented on their successes in enforcing the laws against drug pushers and importers, but vigilance must be maintained and numbers of personnel increased if we are to curtail this traffic in the new Europe.
I am glad that in the past few years, and for the future, the importance of tourism to our economic growth and has been acknowledged in Europe. The growth industries of the future will be tourism and its allied businesses. It was interesting to read in The Sunday Times supplement dealing with the 300 richest people in Britain, that more wealth is being created in the food and leisure areas than in property ownership, development and management which led the field in the past.
Ireland is well situated to take its place among the greater tourism destinations if we can work with our partners. Over the past three years, EC Structural Funds have played a very important role in securing a dramatic increase of up to 45 per cent in foreign tourism earnings; in 1991 tourism earnings stood at £1.2 billion; and in the three years up to the end of 1990, the tourism sector helped to create over 16,000 additional jobs in the Irish economy. When developing our tourism areas, we must learn from the mistakes made in southern Europe, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco and North Africa. We must protect our environment because tourism can provide many jobs and our green environment will attract many visitors. Tourism accounts for one in 14 of all jobs, or one job in eight in the services sector.
Under the operational programme for tourism, which is in place until the end of 1993, over £130 million will be invested from the European Regional Development Fund and over £30 million from the ESF. This EC development investment fund is helping to put large public and private investment into tourism. Implementation of the Maastricht Treaty will ensure that the Irish tourism sector continues to have access to these considerable sources of assistance and will help towards further growth in the sector, which now represents about 7 per cent of GNP.
The Maastricht Treaty gives us an opportunity to develop a stronger foreign policy area. It is important in today's world that what President Bush has called the new world order is not allowed to become a new American world order. For this reason — if for no other — it is imperative that Europe should develop a cohesive and strengthened foreign policy. We have seen the need for a European voice in world affairs which would be much more influential than that of any single country. We must be vigilant in ensuring that we have a strong say in eliminating human rights violations wherever they occur. In the area of human rights violations problems in international affairs are occurring, and continue to occur.
The rule of international law must be established everywhere. There is no point in suggesting that international law can only be applied in situations such as we had last year in the Gulf area. In other areas, international legal conditions are not being fulfilled, in particular, in the Middle East, occupied Palestine territories continue to be a bone of contention in contravention of every international law that has been signed since 1948.
The changes which have taken place in Eastern Europe will have a profound effect on the political world stage over the next few years and decades. We have seen the problems of the break up of Yugoslavia and the "democratisation" of former socialist countries in the East. It will be interesting to see how these countries develop in the future and Ireland should play a major part, within Europe, in ensuring that if these countries do not democratise, they do not return to the situation that existed prior to 1989.
The Maastricht Treaty commits member states to co-operate systematically in the task of defining positions on international issues and in negotiations. Ireland has set out three major aims to ensure peace and stability in Europe and beyond: to ensure that our values are fully reflected in EC policy in the areas of peaceful settlements of disputes; to ensure respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms, disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation; and to ensure that our traditional position on security and defence matters is not prejudiced. These three aims are of extreme importance to me and to everybody in Ireland. If they are adhered to there will be major advances towards a peaceful environment in which to advance our political, social and economic needs.
I am glad the Treaty does not set up a common defence policy. It contains no mutual defence commitments and conscription cannot be introduced or imposed in Ireland through the Treaty. All decisions on foreign and security policy will be unanimous, so Ireland cannot be out-voted. Any exception to this rule to permit majority voting in limited areas must itself be agreed unanimously, thus giving Ireland the same safeguards. Any decision to refer a matter to the Western European Union must also be unanimous.
Foreign and security policy remains outside the framework of the EC as such; instead, it will continue to be agreed by the governments working directly together. For instance, in this area, the European Court of Justice has no rule. In the 1996 intergovernmental conference all decisions must be taken unanimously. By ratifying Maastricht we do not close our options for these negotiations.
While Irish currency is a strong currency within the snake, nevertheless it is impossible to cash an Irish Punt in a European country. It is disgraceful that the Irish Punt is a recognised and strong currency but there is no access to exchange that currency throughout Europe.
We will obviously encounter pitfalls as we approach the end of the aims of Economic and Monetary Union, but Ireland has proved that it can stand up to the challenges on the international scene. It is of extreme importance that everybody should go out on June 18 and vote in favour of this Treaty because, irrespective of the pitfalls, nobody can tell me that there would not be enormous disadvantages for Ireland if we do not vote in favour of this Treaty by a substantial majority.
We are discussing a very historic event; there is no doubt about that. In that context, it is to be welcomed that the Taoiseach saw fit to come here and address the House this morning and it is appropriate, given the importance of the decision which is to be made.
At the outset we should remember that the European movement sought initially to prevent a recurrence of war in Europe. That is a very worthwhile objective and the effort has been successful. That idea led to a series of evolutionary steps in which we became involved in 1973 when we joined the European Economic Community, and moved on to the Single European Act in 1987. We are now debating the European Union Treaty today.
Undoubtedly a progression is taking place and evolution is at work. Indeed, it would be naive and foolish of us to deny that this evolution will go on, leading to an increasing level of integration in Europe. It is a pity, in that context, that there is such an abiding degree of ignorance about what is involved in the referendum on 18 June.
There is a great ignorance and confusion among the public. Many people still think this Treaty is just about abortion. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is a pity a debate on this issue had not been generated sooner. We are now considering the issues, as it were, at five minutes to midnight. We must make up our minds on 18 June and I regret that the Irish people have not had a greater opportunity to tease out all the issues involved.
It is a pity the White Paper was not published sooner and that we do not have a foreign affairs committee to give a worthwhile lead in stimulating and shaping a debate on this matter. We have lost a worthwhile opportunity in as much as we did not seek, in either House, to involve the Members of the European Parliament in the debate. I am sure they would have had very significant contributions to make and very worthwhile advice to give.
We should remind ourselves of some of the benefits which membership of the European Community has brought us. For every pound we spend these days in Europe we get £6 back in return; I understand that something like 6 per cent of the Irish national income comes from the European Community and that there are 72,000 more people in employment in this country compared with the situation in 1971. One can imagine what the situation would be if we were not in the European Community, given the dreadful unemployment problems we face.
What do those people who are opposed to the ratification of this Treaty suggest we do in relation to the generation of the money and the benefits which Europe has brought us? What do they suggest we should do in relation to the 6 per cent of our national income which we obtain from the European Community and which would be in jeopardy if we decided not to ratify this Treaty? The answer should be spelled out clearly in terms of what it would mean to the ordinary Irish person. These people should also explain how we would have managed without the £3,000 million which we will have obtained in Structural Funds from the European Community between 1989 and 1993. How could we cope with the needs for motorways, for the development of airports, industrial development, etc., on which I understand a figure in the region of £1,200 million has been spent? What would we say to the students who are looking for places in training and education? I understand 220,000 FÁS places will be made available and funded from Europe in the 1989-93 period. Approximately 2,500 post-graduate places will be funded from Europe and 1,000 ERASMUS students will benefit from European funds. Our tourism industry has also benefited. Money is being invested in the Temple Bar area and in the development of the Ballinamore-Ballyconnell Canal and an enormous amount of money has gone into agriculture. In many ways it has been very badly spent, but the reality remains — money has been poured into the Irish economy and, in one way or another, has made its way into the pockets of a large number of people.
Our impact on the development of Europe has not been very profound. We have made very little impact on the shaping of Europe or the course of its development. We had the Presidency of the European Community four times. As I look back on it now, speaking as a relatively ordinary Irish person, I cannot think of anything very much which was achieved during those Presidencies, and I believe I am typical of the Irish people. I know we had a role in the production and development of the Lomé Agreement and that we proposed an EC poverty programme but I am not sure it made any great impact.
However, we must acknowledge the enormous contribution our membership of the European Community has made to the development of our social policy. Equal pay and equal opportunities for women are now taken for granted. They are a reality and nobody but the Byzantine element has any objection to that. When we joined the European Community that was not the case, and I very much doubt if those changes would have happened at the rate at which they have happened if we were not a member of the European Community. There have been enormous and very worthwhile developments in labour law; the rights of people at work have been seriously enhanced and protected by our membership of the European Community.
There have been developments in the areas of health and safety at work, very important issues. The European Community has had a great impact there. However, there are other issues important such as, clearer beaches, the development of more healthy water supplies and so on. We must now ask where we go from here.
We are moving into an area of economic and monetary union. We are told we will get increased structural funds, and that there will be a cohesion fund. I have doubts about the effectiveness of the Cohesion Fund and its capacity to achieve full cohesion. However it is a step towards improving cohesion in Europe which, in turn, means a step towards improving the standards of living in this country.
There are proposals for important developments in areas, such as education, public health, and the environment. The new European citizen's rights will benefit many people in this country. The enhancement of the rights of Irish citizens has come through Europe because people were forced to take their case to the European Court. I do not think we can easily forget those things, cast them aside or take them for granted and then begin to think of pulling out and walking away. If we do that, we will have to think very clearly about what the options are and ask how we could cope with the new situation.
There will be increased commitments to greater funding for research and development from the European Community. If this country is to advance and develop, it is essential that we spend more money on research and development, generating new products and technologies and developing the capacity to transfer to this country technologies which exist elsewhere. To do this requires a significant expenditure and, in this area, the European Community will be of considerable benefit to us.
In relation to economic and monetary union, I am concerned that there seems to be a greater level of clarity in relation to Monetary Union than Economic Union. There will, of course, be some benefits from monetary union — the reduction in transaction costs, reduced interest rates, reduced inflation rates and a reduction in the national debt. But the other side we will see a reduction our capacity to control our own economy and to determine our own economic affairs. You do not get anything for nothing. We are unquestionably ceding some control of our economic affairs under the proposals in the chapters on Economic and Monetary Union. However, costs and benefits are involved and we must make up our minds where the balance of benefit to this country lies.
There are worthwhile proposals in the Treaty for the enhancement of the quality of life. Equal opportunities are to be guaranteed to women. That is very important, in fact it is essential. We will see proposals for new laws on social matters. There will be proposals to develop schemes to tackle the problem of drug dependence. This is a very serious problem in the country, but particularly in the city of Dublin and our involvement in Europe will greatly enhance our capacity to deal with that.
We will also benefit from increased European investment in tackling the dreadful problem of AIDS. To deal with such a problem requires a multinational effort, a cross-nation joint programme or a series of programmes. Our research workers will greatly benefit participating in those programmes. If we are not part of the European Community, we would be excluded from those areas.
The Treaty outlines important principles dealing with the enhancement of consumers' rights and the generation of enhanced levels of consumer protection. Those who are worried about our heritage will be pleased to notice that there are important provisions in the protection of our heritage, funds to protect our environment and so on.
I am concerned at the degree to which Europe has withdrawn from the full application of the Social Charter. I am disappointed that there is not a greater degree of commitment to the Social Charter and that a greater effort is not being made to ensure that it is developed and enhanced.
The European Ombudsman will provide Irish citizens with an important court of appeal, where they can take their grievances if they feel they have been badly treated in relation to matters that are referred to the European Community. The Committee of the Regions will be important. Indeed, on that matter it has to be regretted that we have not divided the country into a greater number of regions because I understand that that would enhance our capacity to benefit from the regional funding. We should urgently examine that to see what the position is. The proviso that the principle of subsidiarity of decisions will be developed to its ultimate is important. It is very important that decisions which can be taken locally should be taken at the local level.
There has been much talk, concern and worry about the Irish Protocol. The first reality here is that the Irish Protocol has been put into the Treaty by this country. The second reality is that contents of that Protocol were formulated in this country, it is our Protocol and it is we, the Irish Government — some of us cast a very cold eye over it and were opposed to it when it was introduced in 1983 after a very rancorous and difficult debate when many of us cautioned against its implementation — who have generated this problem, and the difficulties we are now experiencing are of our own making.
Considerable concern has been expressed in relation to foreign and security policy. Co-operation in these matters, of course, has been taking place in Europe since 1970. Indeed, that co-operation is based on the principle that the countries involved will have to consult with one another and that positions and policies will have to be worked out by agreement. It is also made clear that defence is not a part of this process. Ireland is neutral, and Ireland remains neutral. The European Community, as I understand it, accepts that position. It is of significance that in the series of countries who have made applications to join the European Community, there are countries such as Austria, Finland and Sweden who are themselves neutral, even if their neutrality has been produced for reasons which differ from those which gave rise to our neutrality. It seems clear to me that the lobby which will be in favour of countries in the Community remaining neutral will be enhanced when these countries join, and that seems to be very likely.
However, as I have said already, there is an evolutionary process at work and there is a clear statement in the Treaty that a common defence policy will be discussed in 1996. We are moving in that direction and I believe it would be simpleminded and naive for anybody in this country to pretend otherwise. We are going to have what the Europeans call a confrontation with reality. We are going to have to face up to that difficult position. However, our capacity to face up to it will be greatly enhanced by the presence of these other countries who will be broadly in support of our position on neutrality.
The final aspect of safety for the Irish people in relation to this matter is that if any changes do take place they will have to be ratified in a full referendum; and, again, it will be the Irish people who will have the final say of "yes" or "no" to what will be proposed in those circumstances. The fact that that constraint will exist will considerably enhance the negotiating positions of Irish Ministers and the Irish Government as they deal with the Europeans on that matter. I do not want to be naive or simple minded and I do not want to pretend that there will not be very important questions down the road on that issue, but it would be foolish for anybody to pretend otherwise and, if we do, in effect we are misleading the public.
I would like to consider what the consequences of a "no" vote would be. To begin with, I think it would be fair to say that EC funding would be jeopardised. There would be significant negative effects on the economy, even if those negative effects arose entirely from a diminution of confidence in relation to where this country goes. In addition, the Treaty could not be ratified at all in Europe. That, of course, would face the Europeans with the challenge of renegotiating the Treaty and that, in turn, may be very undesirable. Ireland would also be excluded from policy issues. If this Treaty is rejected, where does that leave this country in its aspiration for unity with Northern Ireland, and the unity of the 32 Counties? If we say "no", then I believe we are building an even bigger, uglier and more difficult border around the six counties in Northern Ireland, and that is something I would very much regret, and it would be very undesirable. That aspect of rejection of the Treaty has not been given anything like the attention it deserves.
Undoubtedly, there is going to be a diminution in the degree to which we will have control over our own affairs. However, on the other hand, there are significant benefits, and I believe we have to balance those benefits against the losses in sovereignty and so on. Indeed, it might be worth mentioning that Mr. John Hume spoke some time ago in relation to the death of the nation state. I am not so sure that I would go all the way with him in that statement, but it is interesting that a man in his position should make such a statement.
If we vote "no", then I believe it is important that the alternatives would be considered. Some of those alternatives I have outlined as best I can but I do wonder, what alternatives are those people who advocate a "no" vote proposing; what have they to say in relation to what will be done and what would have to be done if we vote "no"? What have they to say about the sacrifices which would inevitably follow for the Irish people? I am not opposed to people making sacrifices — indeed, there are times when it is desirable — but I honestly believe that if somebody is suggesting people that people should take a course of action which will lead to considerable difficulties and problems, they have an obligation to spell out those difficulties rather than land them in the middle of the problems and then shrug their shoulders and attempt to walk away from what they have been advocating. I am not happy that there has been anything like a clear, coherent definition and explanation of what the position would be and what the difficulties would be if we decide to vote "no" on 18 June.
Senator Lanigan said that some of the people who are opposed to the ratification of the Treaty had not solutions. I would not believe that. My reservations relate to the nature of the solutions and the difficulties which would follow if those solutions were implemented. As far as I am concerned, I am in favour of the ratification of this Treaty, and I am very happy to state that that is the position of my party, the Labour Party.
I am in favour of the Treaty for a number of reasons, but one of them is negative. If we pull out of the European Community and we walk away from it, there are elements in this country and in Irish society who would set about turning the clock back to the year 1900, if they would not turn it back further. I do not want those people to get their hands on the levers of power. I see the European Community as a very important restraint and restriction on the capacities and power of those people and I would not like to see those elements let loose on Irish society.
I am also in favour of what is happening for more positive reasons. I believe it is going to give us an opportunity to continue to develop the country; it is going to give us an opportunity to play an important role in sustaining, enhancing and developing notions that relate to peace in Europe and in the world. That was the basic reason the idea was generated in the first place and that remains an enduring, worthwhile aspiration. You have only to look at the television any night to see how worthy it is in the context of what is happening in other parts of Europe arising from the failure to face up to the challenges of these founding fathers Senator McDonald spoke about.
I am in favour of it. I am in favour of our playing a much more active role in Europe in trying to shape the policies for the development of Europe. As things are now structured, we are in a position to make an impact out of proportion to our size and we should seize that opportunity.
I am a member of the Labour Party. Our party is affiliated to the Socialist group in Europe, the largest group in the European Parliament. It is one of the key players in determining and shaping policy in Europe. I see myself, and indeed I see the Labour Party, as being part of that tradition. I see us playing a very important role in that group in its efforts to shape, develop and enhance Europe and by doing that to bring prosperity and extra benefits to this country.
May I begin by welcoming Minister Daly here this afternoon. He comes to us regularly and it is nice to see him.
It is a measure of the importance which the Government attach to this particular matter that the Taoiseach should open the debate for us this morning. I commend the words he spoke earlier. From a Progressive Democrat point of view, may I say that we unreservedly support the Treaty and the elements within it. I think we could be described as enthusiastic Europeans and I am gratified to note from the opinion polls in the newspapers if they can be believed — I suppose that is open to question — that of the various political parties, our supporters are the most enthusiastic Europeans. My own enthusiasm for Europe dates back more than 20 years ago when I first began to visit Brussels. I was very supportive of the original decision to enter the European Community; I was supportive of the Single European Act and I support this Treaty.
I would re-emphasise what our party leader, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy O'Malley, said at our party conference in Waterford a couple of weeks ago. He said that as a European liberal party, we advocate an open, confident, even generous approach to Europe, rather than a begrudging bookkeeper approach. It was quite notable and inspiring to hear the words of the Vice-President of the Commission, Martin Bangemann, when he spoke at the same conference, because he articulated very well what the European idea is all about. It is not just about money; it is not just about cohesion. It is about far more than that. It is worth going back to what the ideals of the founding fathers were; that vision is still with us and that is the vision to which we subscribe.
It is remarkable to think that countries that were at one another's throats could, within 12 years, sit down and formulate a Treaty such as the Treaty of Rome with the aspiration of never having to fight a European war again. That was the driving force which brought the Community into existence. I believe those ideals are just as valid today as they were then. There is a perception being promoted that the fall of the Warsaw Pact, the decline of Communism, the break-up of the Soviet Union and the re-emergence of nation states is in some way a model for Europe. I would submit that it is quite the contrary. We only have to look at the situation in Yugoslavia today to see what the re-emergence of the nation state can do and the instability that it can bring to peace. I think there is a widely held view within the country — I hope there is — and it is certainly my view and the view of my party, that it is by closer political union, by closer economic union, by closer monetary union that we can hope to prevent the type of devastation and the type of annihilation which we saw twice within this century.
In some ways we in this country have been removed from some of those appalling developments. It is quite revealing to go to parts of Flanders. As a farming person, I find it very easy to identify with people who planted their crops and hoped to harvest them, but who saw their homes, their land and their families removed off the face of the earth — and that happened twice within a single generation. We concentrate on some of the suffering which we had to endure over the centuries, but in some respects what we had to suffer pales into insignificance compared to what families in Europe had to suffer within a single generation. That is the achievement of the European Community. It is my hope that that achievement will be built on, that it will endure and that the values which are so central to European civilisation can be brought to bear in the wider world outside Europe to protect the peace, to ensure that nations behave in a civilised way, and that they resolve their differences through negotiation and consultation.
Our membership of the European Community over the past 20 years has done a great deal to improve our own self-confidence, our view of what we stand for in the world. It has reinforced the values we hold dear and, perhaps, which were submerged as we came out of a colonial past. I believe our confidence has grown enormously. I also believe we can bring to the European table many of the values which we hold to be important to enhance that desire for peace, to enhance that desire for conciliation and to enhance that desire for a common heritage and a common citizenship which the Treaty will bring to us. I think it was Sir Kenneth Clarke, in the series of programmes he did on the BBC some years ago on "Civilisation", who suggested that the restoration of civilisation to Europe began from places like the Skelligs Rock on the west coast of Ireland and from the monastic settlements. When you consider that we had no European union then and we had no communication, the fact that Ireland could have had such a profound impact on European civilisation is one we might remember and one that might give us some confidence when we bring our values to the negotiating table in Europe.
I do not for one moment presume that all of what has been achieved within the European Community and, indeed, our membership of it, has brought nothing but benefit. It has brought very significant benefits. The economic benefits were spelled out for us quite clearly by the Taoiseach this morning and they have been re-emphasised during the debate; there is no need to go into them in detail. We all know that the transfers from the Common Agricultural Policy and the Structural Fund account for 6 per cent of our national income. In 1991 we contributed £348 million to the Community and in return we got £2,200 million; for every £1 we put in we get £6. These economic benefits are incontestable.
The other thing that our membership has done is that it has removed us from economic dependence on our nearest neighbour, which was so dramatic over such a long period. Now, 70 per cent of our exports are within the Community but 41 per cent are in the Community outside of Great Britain, whereas in 1970 11 per cent of our exports went to the other member states and 63 per cent of our exports went to the United Kingdom. We have therefore a much more diverse economy. We have an economy which is much less dependent on one particular trading partner. That is to be welcomed and it is something that should grow and develop.
Where we are today has developed out of the Treaty of Rome, then the Single European Act and now inexorably once we established the Single Market where we would have free movement of people, goods, capital and services, it was logical to extend into the area where there would eventually be a single currency and where banking would be regulated on a European level. That is at the core of the Treaty, although there are many other aspects to it; but that is an important aspect of the Treaty.
To achieve this union the Community have instituted the Cohesion Fund. I know the Commission proposal is for a doubling of the Structural Funds from the present level of £3 billion, which came to us between 1989 and 1993, but that is a matter for negotiation; it is not certain that the figure will be a doubling but it is certain that it will be very substantially increased. Again, that is a measure of the commitment of the larger, more prosperous countries within the Community to this ideal, the vision we spoke about earlier, to have a society which is just and fair and which encompasses all the people of Europe equally to the degree that is possible. It is surprising that countries are prepared to put up so much money for poorer countries to see that the gaps are closed so that we can proceed to a point where we have a common currency, the European Monetary Institution, the European System of Central Banks and eventually the European Central Bank.
It has been put abroad that the development of a European Central Bank will mean that the Deutschemark and the German Bundesbank in some way will decide unilaterally on everything. I can say quite categorically that without a European Central Bank and the participation of the other member states the Deutschemark would definitely be dictating to us. In fact what is happening, in my view, is that the Germans are ceding part of their sovereignty in the economic area and we are increasing our sovereignty by having an input into those decisions and how monetary policy and economic policy at European level are dictated.
There is the Treaty provisions in relation to achieving economic and monetary union. These relate to national debt/GDP ratio, inflation rates and so on. That imposes certain conditions on us. I do not accept that it makes it less important, or that in some way we are not going to have to manage our economy, there will not be an onus on us to manage our economy. I think it is quite the reverse. It is going to put an increasing onus on us to manage our economy in a prudent and disciplined way, as we have been doing over the past two years. It is notable that our partners already concede that we fulfil almost all the parameters which would allow us to enter the monetary union and that, provided we keep going in the right direction on the debt to GDP figure, we will have no difficulties. There are, therefore, very positive aspects to that dimension of the Treaty and they do not absolve us from our responsibilities to manage our affairs in a prudent and proper way. Of course, the benefits from that are quite apparent.
From my point of view, farming is a very important aspect of national life. As my party's spokesperson on agriculture, I would like to devote a little time to that. I submit that as a result of European Monetary Union and the fixed exchange rate which will result, along with low inflation, the common interest rate and, I hope, lower interest rates and budgetary restraint, all will be to the benefit of farming, as it will be to the benefit of Irish society as a whole. All the things which will accompany Economic and Monetary Union, as well as the removal of the barriers to trade which will come at the beginning of 1993, will be of great benefit to an agriculturally based economy such as ours which is so heavily dependent on international trade. The importance of agriculture to our economy is well known, 40p in every pound's worth of exports come from agriculture and 70 per cent of what we produce off our farms must be exported. Therefore, the easier trade resulting from the Single European Act, and then going forward to Economic and Monetary Union, will help Irish agriculture. The increases in the Structural Funds which we can expect over the next five years will also bring direct benefits to agriculture. They will help diversification and rural development. There is in the Treaty a short reference to the question of rural development and to the question of Structural Funds. Agriculture will also share in the general economic benefits which will accrue to Ireland from a better roads and transport infrastructure resulting from the funds.
I note that my farming colleagues in the Kildare IFA County Executive during the past week decided that they would support a "no" vote for Maastricht. I find that incomprehensible. I can understand why some people within our society are in favour of a "no" vote, but I really cannot understand how members of the farming community are in favour of a "no" vote. God help us. The reason they gave for favouring a "no" vote was the co-responsibility levy on cereals. That was the reason they gave, as reported in The Nationalist and Leinster Times. I really cannot understand that. To presume that the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy is part of the European Treaty is just incomprehensible. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the adoption of the European Treaty. There is nothing, as far as I can see, in the Treaty which refers to the Common Agricultural Policy. In Article 130a — and I have read this document——
It is in Article 130b.
I will come to that in a minute.
If you could persuade the Government to give you an index it would be much easier.
I would subscribe to Senator Ryan's call in that respect.
Article 130a states that the Community "shall aim at reducing disparities between the levels of development of the various regions and the backwardness of the least-favoured regions, including rural areas."
Article 130b states:
The Community shall also support the achievement of these objectives by the action it takes through the Structural Funds (European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund, Guidance Section; European Social Fund; European Regional Development Fund, the European Investment Bank and other existing financial instruments.
To suggest that the well known deficiencies in the way the Common Agricultural Policy is going to be reformed and the negative effect that will have on some Irish farmers should in some way be used to vote down the Treaty is something I cannot understand, because bad as things might be in farming at present — and I accept that they are not all that good — I do not know what they would be like if we decided to say "no" to this Treaty.
There are some questions I have about the Treaty and some aspects of it that need to be clarified. One relates to the Structural Funds and the whole question of additionality and to what extent is it going to be incumbent upon us to continue with certain levels of additionality? If private funds are contributed to projects under the Structural Funds or under cohesion, will they be taken into account for additionality? These are aspects that are not directly within the Treaty but they are associated with it. They are matters that we are going to have to clear up in the coming months.
I have spoken about the whole question of cohesion and farming. I have also spoken about the more wealthy member states like Germany giving us the money. Central to the Treaty is the idea of subsidiarity, that we devolve to communities decision-making at the lowest appropriate level and, as a country, we have some way to go in that respect. We have a very clear policy of centralising decision-making and how funds are distributed and so on. I would very much favour a more flexible approach in that respect, a greater role for local authorities, a greater role for local decision making. There was some evidence of that in the Leader programme, that at least people when they came up with ideas could progress them through various stages until they got to European level but we have a long way to go in respect of subsidiarity and that is an idea associated with sovereignty. It would improve our sovereignty to devolve more decision-making down to lower levels.
In my view in some respects the Treaty does not go far enough. I would be one of the people who would use the notorious "f" word which I think Mr. Major referred to. I would be in favour of the federalist model. I do not see any difficulties about that. The one thing I do see as a problem is this question of what is called the democratic deficit, the role that elected representatives have and the role the European Parliament has in the whole decision-making process. I realise there is a broader role for the Parliament under the Treaty, that it has consultative powers. In fact, it is a requirement on the Commission and the Council to consult it in certain matters. I realise that there is the matter of the Ombudsman, that there will be the right of petition to the Parliament, but I think it is still a long way short of what it might be.
The Martens report from the European Parliament which was drawn up last March gives the opinion of the Parliament on some of these matters. It points out some of the deficiencies which are apparent in relation to how the Parliament is consulted. It is only right that there is a democratic balance within the system which allows elected representatives to have a proper input and that not all the power devolves to the Council and to the Commission. The argument is put forward that because we have one vote in 12 at the Council in some way there is a proper check and balance within the system but it is not nearly as effective a check and balance as it would be to have Parliament have a much stronger role in the whole question of how decisions are arrived at. It says in one of the declarations of the final Act, the one on the number of members of the Commission and of the European Parliament:
The conference agrees that the Member States will examine the questions relating to the number of members of the Commission and the number of Members of the European Parliament no later than at the end of 1992, with a view to reaching an agreement which will permit the establishment of the necessary legal basis for fixing the number of Members of the European Parliament in good time for the 1994 elections.
What does that mean for us? Have we given much thought to that declaration? Does enlargement mean that there will be fewer Irish Members of the European Parliament? It is obviously going to get to the point where we cannot have a parliament of 1,000 or 1,200 or 1,400 members so there has to be some check on it. I wonder how much thought we have given to that declaration and it is referred to elsewhere in the Treaty. I would have worries about the diminution of our input into the European Parliament. Our European parliamentarians of all parties, as a group, have been very effective and very good ambassadors for the country and have worked very hard on our behalf. I would like to see that continue.
The other question that arises is one that is related to it and to which we should give attention as a Parliament. It directly affects us and it is a declaration on the role of national parliaments in the European Union. It reads:
The Conference considers that it is important to encourage greater involvement of national parliaments in the activities of the European Union.
To this end, the exchange of information between national parliaments and the European Parliament should be stepped up. In this context, the Governments of the Member States will ensure, inter alia, that national parliaments receive Commission proposals for legislation in good time for information or possible examination.
Then it goes on to talk about appropriate reciprocal facilities and regular meetings between Members of Parliament interested in the same issues. Again, we have a long way to go before we fulfil the aspirations contained in that declaration. We still are awaiting our foreign affairs committee. The fact that we have a committee on secondary legislation of the European Community is not enough. There has to be much greater and closer liaison between the European Parliament, the Commission and our Parliament. It must be a much more integrated and much closer working relationship.
When we debated reform of the Seanad several Members put forward the view that Commissioners should be invited to the Seanad, that even Members of the European Parliament could come to address it. It is quite remarkable — and Senator Raftery has more experience of this matter than I have — how liberal the procedures are within the European Parliament in terms of committee meetings and so on. They are quite open and there is quite ready access to them. We could learn some lessons about that. As I said a couple of weeks ago, we tend to sit on our dignity sometimes. We might look at models other than the one across the water from us on which we have modelled most of our institutions.
One of the other positive aspects of the Treaty is the article on the environment, Article 130. I believe the use of the Cohesion Fund and so on will give us a great ability to advance the progress which has been made in relation to exploiting the advantages we have from an environmental point of view. This country has a huge possibility to use its clean and green environment to commercial advantage as well as to the ordinary advantages which would accrue to society. I do believe we have an opportunity there to advance matters and we should avail of that opportunity.
The other matter is the question of education which is covered in the Treaty. It makes references in Article 126 to the use of languages and to vocational training. It says:
Community action shall be aimed at developing the European dimension on education, particularly through the teaching and dissemination of the languages of the Member States....
There, again, there are some lessons for us and I hope that aspect of the Treaty can be used to improve the learning of continental languages in our schools. I know there was reference to it by the Minister for Education in recent weeks but it is quite obvious that if we are to participate fully within the European context and if we are to avail of whatever job opportunities there are for people outside our country without having to send them to America or further afield, it is important for us to become conversant with and to be able to speak the languages of our Community partners. I hope there will be cohesion within the whole question of language.
The following reference was made to the matter of vocational training:
The Community shall implement a vocational training policy which shall support and supplement the action of the Member States, while fully respecting the responsibility of the Member States for the content and organisation of vocational training.
That fits in quite well with the proposals the Culliton report. Again, that is a positive aspect.
There is the matter of culture which was dealt with in the Treaty and it very much enhances our own culture. One of the things which needs to be said quite clearly about the whole European ethos is that it does not ever wish to intrude on the national character of a people, their culture or their traditions, or indeed in the way they conduct their moral affairs which is something which I had intended to come to earlier. There are possibilities there to enhance our culture.
There is the whole matter of defence on which I had intended to spend some time. The fact that Sweden, Austria and some other countries wish to join the Community will be a help to us in that respect. The talk about conscription is a lot of rot. The sooner that is scotched the better. It says in the Treaty "a common defence policy, which might in time lead to a common defence", it certainly does say that but the first step to take that hurdle will be in 1996——
That is not true.
Senator Ryan, you will have your opportunity to contribute so I would ask you to let Senator Dardis speak.
——when the Council will have to make a unanimous decision. If we wish to proceed beyond that point we will be faced with a referendum.
Not true.
A common defence policy, it must be said, is not the same as common defence. That is something that is being put abroad — that a common defence policy is the same as common defence. It is not.
I think the road to a common foreign security policy is the road to travel. We have to take on our responsibilities in relation to the Community. We cannot always have a one way road where we are demanding what we perceive to be in our interests without ever giving anything in return. I do not have the fears in this particular respect that some Senators have; I know Senator Ryan is one of the people who have that fear.
My hope is that there will be a very strong and positive response to this Treaty, that on 18 June the Irish people will, as they have done in the past, overwhelmingly endorse our continued membership of Europe, that we will not become a marginalised society within the European Community, that we will continue to contribute as we have done in the past to the advancement of human rights, and to the advancement of peace within the Community. That is my hope and I think this Treaty will achieve that.
I apologise to Senator Dardis for interrupting him, but he is well able to handle it anyway.
It would be an enormously useful exercise if people like myself, Senator Dardis and others with differing views were to debate the issue publicly and on the media over the next three or four weeks when the referendum comes before the people but since those of us who oppose it are effectively going to be excluded from RTE for the next four weeks because we do not have party political representation, and since the Government Information Service has told RTE that Ministers will not debate with people who are not of equal status with them, i.e. front bench spokesman, and since there is only one party with a front bench spokesman, that is the Democratic Left, who are against this, we are going to have wonderful debates between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Progressive Democrats and the Labour Party about the issues they all agree on. It appears to me reasonable that whether people agree with me or not the Irish people are entitled to hear both sides of the argument with something like balance.
I remember the Leader of the Progressive Democrats getting very worked up in 1986 or 1987 during the Single European Act referendum because people he did not think represented anybody were getting what he thought was excessive coverage on RTE and RTE responded appropriately and we were squeezed out for the last three weeks of that referendum as well, as will be done on this occasion. Not content with that, in case people would get a reasonable idea, the Government produce 1.02 million copies of a propaganda leaflet, the first two pages of which is a ringing appeal from the Taoiseach for people to vote "yes" and then pretends that we are going to have a fair and even debate, using taxpayers' money to persuade taxpayers how they are to change their own Constitution.
The last referendum on the Single European Act was graced by posters all around the country put out by the Government and paid for by taxpayers giving what they called ten reasons to vote "yes". I am happy to debate the issues of changing our Constitution, but I am not happy that, that for most of the time, apart from token sound bites on some of the less widely listened to radio programmes, those of us who disagree will be squeezed out of this debate.
Let me remind the House what was said by a man other people in this House should regard more than I do because he was a conservative by nature; Harold McMillan said — and this is one of my favourite quotations —"Whenever I find that the establishment is unanimous about anything, it is almost invariably wrong". If ever I saw a good example of this it is the rush of the entire Establishment, both the old Establishment of the conservative parties and the new Establishment of the rising European liberals of the Labour Party and the trade union movement, who apparently believe that the one thing you must not do any more is quibble with the concept of Europe.
I have a European vision. I have been trying to preach that European vision to the reactionaries who sit in front of me and the reactionaries who sit over there, who tried to preach an American vision of how an economy should develop in this State for the last ten or 12 years, who eulogised the Reagan miracle of low taxes and who ignored the human aspect. I suggest that the people should look beyond the neighbouring island and at the vision of a properly ordered society based on economic growth and social justice which characterises many of the European democracies, most notably those that are currently outside the EC with the added worth of at least Germany and the principles of a considerable degree of social justice that have motivated both major parties in Germany. I have said that for a long time in this House, while people were pursuing their American dream. Now that they have been cured by the disastrous state of the American economy, they are beginning to discover the joys of the concept of a social guarantee that has always distinguished European civilisation.
I like the idea of European civilisation. I like its diversity, I like its languages. I find the study of European languages to be among the most interesting hobbies I have ever taken up. I like the range of people, the range of ideas, the degree of religious tolerance, the considerable degree, by the standard of some other countries, or racial tolerance that characterises some countries. In particular, I would identify Holland, where a considerable number of different races, many of them of colonial origin, seem to mix with a degree of ease that is not evident in other countries. I like the commitment to a social guarantee which leaves very few people in the sort of degraded poverty that so characterises the inner cities of the United States of America. I like all of that but what I do not like is the vision of Europe that is now being foisted upon us which is based, as I hope to show during my remarks, on an outdated economic model.
Let us get some of the realities out of the way first. I do not know whether it is true that the EC has been bad for Ireland. What I do know is that an awful lot of the positive hype of what is supposed to have been good about it is open to serious question. The first, of course, is that the EC is an unemployment blackspot — not just Ireland but the entire EC. Denmark, for instance, had almost full employment when it joined the European Economic Community; the last time I checked unemployment was around 9 per cent, three times higher than when it joined. None of the Nordic countries who remained outside suffered a similar increase in unemployment. When Raymond Crotty identifies growth in unemployment here as at least deserving of serious argument from those who believe we have done well, he is raising an issue that deserves more than a throwaway comment about the growth in the labour force and the growth in population. Our growth in population was not that excessive and it was not the growth in population that caused Denmark's unemployment level to increase by a factor of three, or Britain's to increase by a factor of ten. It might just be the wrong economic policies being pursued by the entire European Community.
The same might be true of the stories about the scale of industrial employment in this country generated by foreign investors. In 1973 there were 66,000 people in this country employed by multinationals; in 1987 there were 80,000 people employed by multinationals. You can go through the wonderful figures about manufacturing exports and when you take out the difference between exports and capital imports related to those exports and the money that has been repatriated in profits, the net benefit of all of this wonderful expansion of exports in terms of residual money left in the economy is about £1.5 billion over about 15 years.
You can then look at agriculture. We are told about the wonderous things that happen. Of course, for 60 per cent of farmers no wondrous things happened, for 20 per cent it was all their birthdays coming together so that even in the bad years, say, 1988 and 1989, when farm incomes declined globally and the IFA whinged about the global figure of £5,500 that they love to wave around, the top 20 per cent of farms still experienced growth in their incomes. What happened was that farming was organised in such a way that the goodies are confined to the top 20 per cent and the pain is transferred to the other 80 per cent. I do not call that a benefit for the nation. It is interesting that the real value of agricultural income in this State is not a lot higher now than it was in 1972. All that has happened is that we have had an accelerated flight from the land, about three times annually as fast post membership of the EC than it was in the previous 50 years annually before we joined the EC. It is 2.4 per cent per annum in comparison with about 0.8 per cent before we joined. The same final sum of money was distributed among a smaller number of people. I do not call that growth or progress.
I believe that those who would stand up and pretend there is no other side to this argument could do us the service of dealing with the issues and the facts of the argument and not with selective use of a coule of figures. These are generalised figures and statements. Manufacturing employment did not grow in this country significantly under membership of the EC. Perhaps we would have been worse off otherwise. That is a valid argument but it is a hypothesis.
One of the problems about the European vision and one I want to address because nobody apparently wishes to deal with it is that those who founded the European Community were people of enormous vision, people who knew what Europe had suffered and who realised that there were advantages of scale in terms of the future way the world economies were going to develop which necessitated six rich countries initially pooling their resources to develop the sort of advantages of scale which would enable them to remain rich. Most of them were already rich. They based that on the economic model which was fashionable then. The theory of trade as it existed up to ten years ago was that where you have free trade you have, first of all, obvious gains because of the reduction in costs and then, by the invisible hand of the market, ultimately those gains are evenly distributed. There may be adjustments to take place but ultimately the gains are evenly distributed. On that basis it was a good thing for a relatively poor country to join a relatively rich group because the gains from free trade — whatever the short term costs — would inevitably and ultimately be distributed evenly. Unless we took absolutely idiotic decisions — and we took a few of those — we would almost inevitably catch up.
The truth, of course, is that that has not happened. The United States has been in an economic and monetary union for 200 years and certain regions have not caught up. Italy has been going rapidly economically for the past number of years and southern Italy is falling further behind. The west of Ireland is worse off relative to the east than perhaps it ever was in spite of economic and monetary union. This has, finally and belatedly, forced the economists to reconsider the conventional theory of trade. They have discovered what was obvious to many people, that those who get ahead economically, even under conditions of free trade, have such advantages of scale in terms of market power, in terms of the cost of penetrating new markets, in terms of market research, that they stay ahead.
This is not a theory I dug up. This is the thesis of the National Economic and Social Council about the effects of the Single Market on Ireland. They said quite clearly that we would not gain from the Single Market, we were not one of the regions which was likely to gain from it. They recommended, as the Irish Government's appropriate response — I do not altogether agree with them — economic and monetary union, including a fiscal union and automatic rights and transfers of resources, as we have, for instance, between the east coast and the west coast of this country.
We got no such fiscal union. Instead, we got the promise of perhaps increased Structural Funds and a Cohesion Fund which currently guarantees us nothing. Let us be clear. Both the NESC, and incidentally the Institute of European Affairs publication, edited by Rory O'Donnell, acknowledge that simply increasing Structural Funds will not deal with regional disparities. Rory O'Donnell is very honest in the book. He says the reason is that nobody knows what causes regional disparities and nobody knows how to deal with them. We in this country — and the Minister sitting in front of me — must know that we have not yet figured out how to deal with regional disparities. Such disparities continue and still exist. We are going to march into an economic and monetary union blissfully believing that what we have not managed to do on this small island, what the United States has not managed to do in its large economic and monetary union and what the Italians have failed to do, is somehow going to happen to us because perhaps we get a once-off payment of £6 billion. That is the upper limit of our dreams, the mythological mega-bucks of the Minister for Justice.
Let us look at where we are going. We are going into a sitution where our currency will be a fixed currency; where we will have a Single Market where the principal basis for the operation of that market is the maximising of competition; where protectionism of all forms will be disapproved of. We are going to attempt to compete on that basis. Already those who are most enthusiastic about this experiment are warning us that if it fails it will be our fault and nobody elses, notwithstanding ten years of economic analysis of new economic theory, notwithstanding what the NESC said about the structural disadvantages that would be built in to this arrangement as it stands. Because there will be no guaranteed transfers, we are actually going to become supplicants.
I do not believe a supplicant nation is ever going to be in a position to compete with those who are handing over the resources. It defies imagination to believe that the rich countries of Europe, even the most benevolent, are going to stand by and hand over resources in order to allow not just Ireland but a large populist country like Spain to catch up on them and compete. They will ensure that we do not, in the famous words of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, sink beneath the ocean but they will equally ensure that we do not catch up and begin to take away large parts of their resources. There are no guaranteed compensations for the extraordinarily rigid and one-sided nature of economic and monetary union, not identified by Senator Brendan Ryan but identified by both the National Economic and Social Council and indeed by the study done by the Institute for European Affairs, both of which acknowledged the need for a fiscal union to achieve anything in the line of converging. Both accepted that the structures of the operation of a free market guarantee effectively that we will remain second class. We are locked into inequality.
The interesting thing is that in the past three weeks the Economic and Social Research Institute produced a view of what these Structural Funds might do for us and they came to a different conclusion from the NESC. We are in the position now where we have the Economic and Social Research Institute, which is a professional body, saying one thing and the National Economic and Social Council, which is supposed to represent Government, industry, agriculture and the trade unions, saying something different. The ESRI was talking about 55,000 new jobs arising out of the increase in the Structural Funds. The reason they said that is because they ignored the NESC criticism of old-fashioned trade theory, because they assumed a real rate of return in capital investment by the State of 7.5 per cent and because they made a number of other assumptions. Economists can make as many assumptions as they want. The overwhelming evidence is that poor regions do not catch up under economic and monetary union even where you have the scale of transfers that you have in the United States or indeed between the east and west coasts here.
The difficulty is that we have been hijacked in this country by an obsession with only one of the things that is necessary for effective international trade. One of the things that makes one competitive in international trade is price. If you reduce tariff and non-traffic barriers, and you are competing otherwise on equal basis, then everything else is the same. Then the cheapest product will obviously be the one that will sell best. Of course, cheap computers do not necessarily outsell dear computers. Cheap video recorders do not outsell dear video recorders; Lada cars do not outsell Volvos because there are considerations other than price involved. We are not going to be able to address all those other issues without the permission, at least, of the European Commission and probably of our sister States within the European Monetary Union. I do not believe they will allow us, we have no guarantee that they will. Even the level of State subsidy for industry in the rich central countries of Europe is proportionately higher than what we can give, because we cannot afford it; they are being asked to reduce it — not made, not told, not required — they are being asked to reduce the level of aid they will give to their indigenous industry. They are rich. They can give aid to their own industry.
I am not quoting myself. I am quoting a speech from Leon Brittan who is a member of the Commission. He said they are asking the Germans, the French and the Dutch to reduce their aid, and the Dutch agreed to do something about it. It is fascinating that we are told we cannot even give preference to an indigenous manufacturer when buying sewer pipes for a local authority water supply. The central European Governments can give aid and subsidies to industry of different kinds on a scale that we cannot afford. They are being asked to do something about it. They spend sums of money subsidising industry that are multiples of the maximum we can aspire to under the increased Structural Funds and, I suspect, the mythological Cohesion Fund.
It seems to me that the arguments based on economics against a relatively under-developed country walking into this as we are doing are overwhelming. The usual bottom line argument which, most regrettably, my colleagues in the Labour Party seem to have swallowed, is that the alternative is worse and we are being told by virtually the entirety of the Irish Establishment that no matter what the Government negotiated at Maastricht we would ultimately have had to vote "yes" in the referendum, because the alternative would have been so dreadful.
It is fascinating to watch Fine Gael, the Labour Party and the Progressive Democrats to a lesser extent say, ultimately, that Fianna Fáil had to be let at this and that whatever they negotiated, we would have had to vote "yes"; they are saying under no circumstances could we vote "no". They have all said that we cannot vote "no" because if we do we will be booted out of — and I am not sure what we will be booted out of — a non-existent institution called European Union. That is the logical and intellectual fallacy behind all this. If they believe that Fianna Fáil and the Government had carte blanche on this because they could never oppose them no matter what they did, then they should have told the people beforehand that they were not going to oppose it, no matter what they did.
The evidence suggests that it would be virtually impossible for one region within a Single Market or an Economic Monetary Union to catch up. Nobody knows how it is done. Nobody knows why regional decline sets in, at least according to the economists that I have read, and nobody knows why regions improve. By contrast, we have considerable evidence about countries that manage to catch up. Among the most successful was Japan, which in the period between 1958 and 1978 increased car exports to the United States from 288 per annum to 500,000 per annum. Would it not have been useful to work out how it was that, without a free trade area, without a single market, without economic and monetary union and with the major disadvantage of about 6,000 miles of Pacific Ocean, Japan managed to catch up on the United States, and then managed to travel a further 4,000 miles across to Europe and do the same thing here?
Why did nobody ever address that? Because what the Japanese did was very unorthodox. It involved a considerable role for innovative private enterprise. It also involved a considerable role for the State in terms of the State devising a strategy, cajoling and coercing the financial institutions into accepting the concept of long term risk, giving those who were prepared to try international markets reasonable protection that they would not close down if things went wrong, and protecting indigenous industry from foreign takeover so that indigenous industry could develop, expand and would not be bought up by competitors when it was impoverished and under pressure in the early stages of development. It also ensured that ideas developed by a massive research and development programme had to be industrially developed within the Japanese economy. They could not be bought up by foreigners.
Incidentally, the NESC report on the Single Market identifies that one of the areas of important concern to an Irish Government should be the possibility of indigenous industries being bought up by foreign competitors. How can we stop that under the procedures we are developing? There is no way we can stop it. We are giving away all those possibilities. In the area of catching up, the best success has been in Japan whose model is being copied by Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea. All of them operate in the same way. There is a judicious measure of protectionism for indigenous industry, coupled with a State directed, State led, State supported and State guaranteed assault on international markets on the basis of quality of product, identifying new areas for product development, and identifying areas in which a product is better than what is in the market place. They are the ones who have succeeded. Regional transfers of a limited form from the rich areas of a single market to the poor areas have never been remotely as successful, any more than they have succeeded in protecting the west of Ireland.
I would suggest a simple analogy. Think about a little boy outside an orchard and the owner of the orchard gives him two choices. The first is that he will leave the orchard locked and there will be a barbed wire fence all around the orchard, but if he can get over the fence he can take as many applies as he wants. The alternative is that he will leave the gates open and tie his hands behind his back, and he can get as many apples as he wants that way. Quite clearly, the first alternative is preferable to the second. They are the two alternatives facing a peripheral country like ours attempting to catch up. We will either have, as we have now, the position where all the moves that a State should be able to make to encourage its industries to compete in international markets will be refused to us, or we can do the reverse and then we will get a sop in the form of regional transfers but we will be forbidden to do what we think necessary. That is why I am opposed, on economic grounds, to this Treaty.
There is, of course, a historical fact also. We foolishly gave away our fisheries in 1972 in return for a temporary limited benefit to agriculture. We have the spectacle, which must be upsetting to any honest Irish person, of 250,000 people in remote Iceland having one of the highest standards of living in the world on the strength of fisheries alone, while we do not have a significant fishing industry.
The censorship of debate on this issue which was decided in this House — as well as the restriction to half an hour on what we are told is the most important Treaty since 1921 — precludes me from continuing on the economic issues. I want to go on to the extraordinary contortion of language involved in Title V on defence and security.
The White Paper says discussions and decisions on the scope and content of a common defence policy, as well as the question of common defence, are left to future negotiation and another intergovernmental conference which is to take place in 1996. That means that such discussion is definitely deferred. I read this Treaty. It is difficult to read. There is no index or table of contents. I read it more than once. I searched it and in desperation yesterday I had my secretary ring the Department of Foreign Affairs to ask them where in the Treaty it says that there can be no common defence policy before 1996. The Department of Foreign Affairs were non-committal. They were very helpful. The answer was that it all depends on how you interpret a number of sections. If you have to look at section J4, which I almost have off by heart, it says that under Article N there will be a revision in 1996, and the revision will be based on the objectives of the Treaty. Objective B of the common objectives is the eventual formulation of a common defence policy which might, in turn, lead to a common defence. It is true that it has been agreed that if the Irish Government or any other government refuse to go ahead there will not be any revision of those terms until 1996. However, what is also true is that the Irish people are giving a mandate to an Irish Government, if they wish, to enter into a common defence policy in 1993 and there is nothing in this Treaty which says there cannot be a common defence policy in 1993 if the 12 Governments agree to it. There is a revision to look at how a particular objective has been reached but there is nothing in the Treaty which says that the matter must be postponed until 1996.
It is of fundamental importance that the people are being conned about the issue of defence. The people are being led to believe this is an aspiration to be looked at in 1996. On 2 January, 1993 if, unfortunately or regrettably, this Treaty is ratified, if the 12 member states of the EC agree they can formulate a common defence policy and there is nothing in this Treaty to prevent this happening.
Since the authorities have decided to censor this debate and restrict Members to half an hour some of these issues will have to come up on Committee Stage, but I wish to say two or three things in conclusion. The biggest myth of all is that Europe will go ahead without us. They cannot expand the EC without us. They cannot change the Common Agricultural Policy. They cannot change the Treaty of Rome or the Single European Act without us. They can set up something new, but they cannot amend the institutions or the structures and they cannot expand the EC without us. Furthermore, I am horrified that Title V and Title VI which are excluded from either Irish or European judicial review are now being given the force of law under the Irish Constitution. The Taoiseach did not address that issue. The Irish people, in terms of foreign policy or the new area of justice and home affairs, will have no appeal to any court other than, perhaps, the European Court of Human Rights in limited cases because we have taken out the constitutional provisions and we have no European Court provisions. We are entitled to an explanation as to why all the objectives of this Treaty are not sufficient to allow a limitless expansion without any further reference to the people.
Secondly, I am astonished that all those Members in both Houses of the Oireachtas who, in the light of the recent controversy involving abortion, the right to travel and the right to information, would have claimed to be far more articulate defenders of the rights of women than I am, are now leaving the two fundamental rights of women — the right to information about abortion services and the right to travel if they so wish — firmly and unequivocally in the hands of Fianna Fáil. I find it astonishing that Fine Gael, the Progressive Democrats and the Labour Party have all said "we will trust Fianna Fáil on the fundamental issues of women's rights and hope we will have an appropriate referendum in November". I, for one, do not trust Fianna Fáil. Their record on these issues is one of appalling opportunism. I am astonished that people who would claim to be in favour of women's rights would trust Fianna Fáil in such fundamental matters, leaving them to be dealt with by a promised referendum some time next November.
Just following the comment of the last speaker, a great deal of legislation in relation to women's rights and issues was, in practice, brought in by Fianna Fáil and I look forward to that continuing.
However, today we are looking at the referendum on the Maastricht Treaty itself. It is, indeed, a very important Treaty. In many ways it is a Treaty which will affect the future of this country and, most of all, the future of its people. It comes at a crucial turning point in which we finally decide that we are joining with our fellow Europeans and moving towards what is effectively a European union. We welcome this forward movement which is going to be good for our future and that of our children. It is a union which we can happily join because it will effectively safeguard the various ideals and aspirations which we had when we obtained our independence. We will be able to maintain the attitudes, the culture and the views of our own country. We will be able to continue, within the union, to a very considerable extent to expand our destiny and our views.
The alternative is, of course, in some ways attractive. It would mean that we would stay as an isolated unit and shut ourselves off from all change. We would become a closed and stagnant society living in the past with few opportunities for employment and with continuing and inevitable high emigration. That would be a very poor prospect and future for our country and our people. Obviously, there will be some diminution of our freedom — in some ways a very considerable diminution of our freedom within this country. On the other hand, perhaps on such matters as neutrality and peacekeeping which we have espoused down through the years it may be possible to articulate our opinions a great deal more effectively from within the European Community than if we were isolationist, living in a little world of our own.
It is a major decision for us to take and it is right that we must put this matter to a referendum of our people. Each person has the opportunity to decide how he or she will vote. Equally, following up the last and other speakers, if in due course we move towards some form of security treaty, this or any other such major development has to come back to the people of this country, and once more they will have the opportunity to decide on it, and not the Government. Indeed, within the European Community there are only two countries in that situation — Ireland and Denmark. It is something unique which we and Denmark share and long may that situation remain. We have a choice over our destiny. This is a very historic and decisive moment.
I see the new Europe we are joining as a totally changed Europe from Europe pre-1939. The change was brought about initially by France and Germany, the traditional enemies, coming together. The EC has since encompassed other states such as ourselves, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and it is now opening outwards, hopefully, into eastern Europe. There is a whole new world situation with the extraordinary changes that have taken place in eastern Europe and elsewhere over the past two years. We, and indeed they, are only just beginning to assimilate and fully take these changes on board. Perhaps I may come back to them briefly in relation to our policy on neutrality and also in relation to security.
For us to build a prosperous society in which we can have the social benefits which we all wish to have and aspire to, it is essential that we have prosperous, effective, competitive industry in this country. Let us not pretend it will be easy in Europe. There is again the temptation to stay as we are. It would be far easier for industry in this country to stay within the protective barriers. Indeed, 20 years ago there were many in industry who would have preferred a protectionist state in which small uneconomic industries continued at high cost without any hope of development, new jobs or opportunities for our children.
I am very glad to say that the present day Confederation of Irish Industry is outspokenly in favour of the European Union even though that means we will be open to competition within our economic situation. We have the opportunity but it is only an opportunity and not a guarantee of competing in a far larger market. So far, we have been extremely successful and we will be even more successful in the future. Therein lies the opportunity for employment for our children, therein lies the opportunity for social development, therein lies the opportunity to provide money for the cultural and environmental aspects we would all like to have.
Let us look at some of the policies and programmes which the Community sets out, and in particular the economic and social policies — I am reading from the CII document. It is hoped to create a more dynamic and faster growing European economy, that is for the entirety of European Union, including this country. It is also hoped to establish economic and monetary union including a single currency by 1999 at the latest. That in itself is an enormous objective. Another objective is to implement policies that will improve the competitiveness of industry and to narrow the gap in living standards between the less developed regions — that includes ourselves — in the European Community as a whole. It is proposed to provide additional European Community funds for education and training. That is one of the most significant aspects of European Union, in that for us to be competitive we have to raise the numbers of persons and standards in terms of education. We have an extremely high standard of education but we do not have the opportunity to participate in education to the extent we should. It is hoped to provide additional European Community funds to transport. There must be an effective infrastructure if we are to compete within Europe or elsewhere. There must be benefits for the environment and for research and development. There must be opportunities to protect the environment through urban renewal, waste management and improved water and land uses. This is something very dear to our hearts and is particularly appropriate in this country. Ireland is regarded rightly, as having very high environmental standards. To link the transport, energy, the telecommunications network of peripheral regions such as this country, is another essential requirement for competitiveness with other regions in the Community.
If we are to have serious economic growth we must have investment within the country and economic union is essential to that investment. If we want to see employment growing and opportunities provided for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren, it is essential that our economy is growing and competitive and the essential foundation for that is education.
Another essential is infrastructure — roads, transport and communications. These are factors which will be immeasurably improved by participation in European Union. It would be impossible for us to achieve these objectives if we did not join in the Union. That is one of the realities of the situation. We are good at competing. Given the chance, we are far better off to take on the 350 million people in the European Community in a competitive spirit and to show what we can do. We can do that very successfully, but we must not retreat behind protective barriers in a tiny isolated market of our own. Since joining the European Community our economic output has doubled, which is an enormous achievement. Our economy has grown 50 per cent faster than the European Community average. That is pretty good competitiveness. Real income, in real terms, per employee in this country has grown by 70 per cent.
Many Irish industries are now world leaders in their class. Our high technology, pharmacology, biotechnology, communications, aeronautics, aerospace and the food industries are now competing at the top of the world class. The aerospace industry is particularly interesting. There are now more than 5,000 people in this country involved in the aerospace industry, whether in maintenance, repair or construction. Even today another factory opening was announced in Clare, which will employ approximately 500 people. I am sure Senator Honan will be able to expand on this, if she wishes. This is a very competitive and growing industry. We are succeeding admirably and will continue to do so. Incidentally, it is one in which our colleagues in the North are also very competitive. There are about 8,000 people involved in the aerospace industry, mainly in Shortts', in the North. One can see it as one of the industries which will grow with the increased North/South business and economic co-operation.
That is another achievement, almost unnoticed, which has been happening over the last two to three years — co-operation between industry in the North and the South of Ireland, with enormous implications for increased prosperity and employment in both parts of this country. Employment is an area of vital concern but it is one of the most difficult, and at times one of the most tragic, areas we are attempting to deal with. However, to deal successfully with employment and to provide opportunities, it must be on a solid basis. Let us be clear about some of the achievements.
Employment in business and in industry has increased by nearly 147,000 since we joined the European Community. Total employment has gone up by over 60,000 despite the change from an agricultural to an industrial economy. We have had a sixfold increase in the number of young people who will be looking in for jobs. It is nice to think that as we develop in the European Union we should be able to provide worthwhile, stimulating and interesting jobs for our young people. If they want to go abroad, that is fine but they may want to stay here, or to come back here with the opportunity of getting a stimulating and worthwhile job.
Industry here has recently increased more rapidly than at any time since the foundation of the State — in fact, since serious records were kept from approximately 1830. There has been a tremendous improvement in employment, in industry and in business and there is every reason to believe that will continue. Since the Single European Act in 1987, half of that increase in employment has taken place.
The increase in employment over the past number of years has been achieved despite the fact that we have had three world recessions and despite the effects of removing tariffs. Let us not undersell ourselves. We have done a tremendous job towards increasing worthwhile employment in this country. There is a long way to go yet but we have moved forward and it is my hope and belief that with European Union we will accelerate progress.
Industry has developed considerably since the removal of trade barriers. Exports increased by 8 per cent per annum over the last number of years, twice the European Community average and a very competitive record. We now sell over 50 per cent of our exports to mainland Europe, contrasting with about 14 to 15 per cent in 1973. When we joined the Common Market as it was then called, people scoffed at the idea that we would greatly increase our exports and optimists thought we might double them to around 30 per cent. We need to remind ourselves that Irish industry exports 80 per cent of its product. Few countries in the world — never mind in the European Community — come near those figures. Of that 80 per cent, three quarters go other community countries. It is not a nice prospect to contemplate the prospect of barriers against us, thus threatening 75 per cent of our exports.
Most jobs in Irish industry and business depend on successful exporting which we are beginning to appreciate particularly the requirement for an adequate transport and communications network. A proper roads infrastructure is lacking at the moment, although we have begun to progress towards it with the northern end of the N50, by-passes such as the Shankill/Bray by-pass which will make a considerable impact on north Wicklow and Wexford, the Athlone by-pass and the Glanmire by-pass, all of which are essential. The next essential development is a road network linking Larne, Belfast, Dublin, Wexford and Waterford which is crucial for a competitive export economy.
In relation to rail, the Community have just agreed to contribute over £70 million towards the development of the Dublin/Belfast network. Seaports will receive £58 millions and airports £70 million with significant further funds to come. The European Union has changed. In previous decades EC membership has been regarded as relating primarily to agriculture where it contributed to great improvements and long may that continue. Senator Raftery will comment on some aspects of agricultural development.
We are moving into a new era where agriculture is no longer — even though it is the major business sector — the only sector of significance. I hope there will be significant growth in the food industry, the agri-business and in other areas. Within agri-business a proper infrastructure will be crucially important.
In 1991 gross receipts for European funding were over £2,000 million, the Common Agricultural Policy guarantee was £1,334 million, Common Agricultural Policy guidance was £140 million, from the European Social Fund we received £370 million, from the Regional Fund £341 million and another £30 million in miscellaneous funding, amounting in total to almost 10 per cent of our GNP. The net receipt per person for the total population was over £500 per person. For the average family, over £2,000 in 1991 came from Europe.
Net receipts have grown enormously — in 1972 £33 million, in 1978 £364 million, in 1985 £915 million and in 1991 £1,867 million. In over 20 years we have received over £14 billion from the European Community, a very considerable sum. If we had to find that amount from our own resources by increased taxation, reduced social benefits, cutting down on hospitals or whatever, today's society would be very different. There would be no 70 per cent increase in real income. Our unemployment level is high but it might otherwise be higher.
We should not regard Europe as a source of pensions or cash transfers only. There are Europeans who would not object if we adopted that attitude and would be happy to give us substantial funding to retain this country as a green oasis in which they might purchase holiday homes. There may be people in this country with that attitude also but it is not conducive to national development.
We must use EC funds to develop infrastructure and for education. We must use them to achieve a competitive advantage so that we can continue to compete with the rest of Europe as we have successfully done in the past. Let us not use them as a crutch but to develop.
I want to quote the CII document on education and commend the CII for placing such emphasis on the requirement for educational development. Irish industry and business now recognise the benefits of educational provision. Since 1973 we have received £1,600 million from the European Social Fund towards the cost of education, training and employment incentives. This year we will receive over £280 million from the European Community towards the cost of educating and training our young people, more than double the amount we received in 1989; £56 million of the European Fund will be spent on the education and training of 31,000 students for business and industry at RTCs and colleges of technology; and 65 per cent of young Irish people aged between 16 and 19 currently receive education or training for a qualification compared with less than 40 per cent ten years ago. Sadly, 80 per cent of unemployed people finish school at 16 years of age. A sum of £35 million will be spent by the European Social Fund this year on vocational preparation and training of young people in skills for employment.
Education is vital to our development. If we compare ourselves with western Germany we find there almost 100 per cent of young people between the ages of 16 and 19 are in full-time employment or training. Here, despite improvement, we are still at 65 per cent. Were we to come up to the German or the Dutch standard we would improve our competitive position and those who received training would be much more likely to obtain employment. No fewer than 50,000 people would be removed from the unemployment register. We have an excellent educational system here but we have not fully realised that competitively we need to retain more of our young people in education and that education policy needs to be oriented more towards what is required.
I mentioned the aerospace industry. Demand for engineers in Ireland has increased by about 80 per cent over the past decade while the number of engineering graduates has increased by 10 per cent. Much needs to be done to relate our educational programme to economic requirements. Having people in full-time education of any sort between the ages of 16 and 19 years is cheaper than paying them unemployment benefit.
I would like to comment on neutrality and security policy. This is a new era where the Warsaw Pact and NATO have been consigned to history. Appalling conflicts continue at present in what was formerly Yugoslavia. We are in a transformed European Community with traditionally neutral countries such as Austria, Sweden and Switzerland about to apply to join. European Community attitudes are going to change substantially because of world changes and because of the changed composition of the Community. We have been a sole voice up until now on many issues where we differed from other Community countries.
Security is no longer a question of massed divisions of tanks possibly advancing across northern Europe, with NATO forces attempting to stop them and the ultimate threat of the nuclear deterrent; that is past history. Appalling conflicts continue in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan where the requirement is for peacekeeping forces. There is a great difference between peacekeeping troops and those who intend to subjugate, defend or otherwise engage in direct military action with an opponent army. We have an admirable record of peacekeeping activity worldwide and now find ourselves advisers to other nations in that capacity. Peacekeeping activity is going to increase and we have a great deal to contribute there. There are many more reasons for joining the European Union but the main one for voting "yes" is that it will provide us with a prosperous future. I hope we have an overwhelming majority on 18 June.
I regret this debate did not take place earlier since I find that Irish people are ill-informed about Maastricht. A member of the Dáil rightly commented some time ago that the Irish people know more about mastitis than they know about Maastricht. We all share the blame for that but the ultimate responsibility must lie with the Government that few people understand the implications of Maastricht. Many say they will not vote because of this.
I have reservations about Maastricht but it has so many positive aspects that we simply have no choice but to vote for it. To do otherwise would be economic suicide. Those promoting Maastricht oversell it and those asking for a "no" vote overcondemn it; the truth lies somewhere in between. There are enough good reasons to vote for Maastricht without a bribe of £6 billion from the Taoiseach in one hand and the threat of an injunction against travel abroad in the other. That should not be.
Maastricht has brought forward the most extraordinary rainbow coalition of opposition from the extreme left to the extreme right. Maastricht is not about abortion, neutrality, pollution or conscription; it is a treaty proposing economic, monetary and political union. It is about cohesion and rectifying the democratic deficit and the promotion of judicial co-operation and a number of other measures beneficial to Ireland. People say that if we vote "no" things will stay as they are. That is not true. If Ireland votes "no" the Treaty falls for the entire Community. There will be no Cohesion Fund and Structural Funds run out in 1993. There is no legal obligation on the Community to maintain Structural Funds at the existing level which was doubled in 1988; they may be reduced or abolished.
I remind those who say that the EC cannot do anything without our permission that that is untrue. Eleven nations of the EC went ahead, with its present proposals, without Britain. In 1985, the Benelux countries went ahead with the Schenger Agreement whereby they got rid of all borders between themselves against the wishes of many in the Community. Five years later the Schenger Agreement was amended to include France and Germany much to the annoyance of Italy in particular. There is nothing we can legally do to stop certain members of the Community from going their own way and I remind the House that a number of EC nations, particularly the original six and Denmark made a strong bid for a two-speed Europe in 1988. Almost certainly if this Treaty falls we will have contributed towards the creation of a two-speed Europe where we will be at a severe disadvantage.
Since this Treaty was agreed there has been growing concern in Germany about including their money in a single currency containing weak currencies such as the Greek. Portuguese, Spanish and Irish currencies. A considerable number of people in Europe would be relieved if we rejected it, because they could then say they gave us a chance and cannot be held back because we do not want to advance. They will do their own thing and allow us come in later if we wish.
I am sorry that extraneous issues are being brought in. I recognise the concerns of the pro-life movement but we should have resolved issues concerning abortion before the referendum on Maastricht. There is no need to hold the Maastricht referendum in June before we put Irishwomen's minds at ease regarding freedom to travel and right to information. To do otherwise is a gross insult to them and I hope they will not vote "no" for that reason. I hope that pro-life people — I resent that term seriously because I am pro-life although not in agreement with pro-life arguments — will realise that a "no" vote will do nothing to solve the abortion issue but could do enormous damage to the economic future of this country.
The problem with accepting the amendment was created in Ireland by those who tried to outlaw abortion by bulldozing through an amendment to the Constitution in 1973 against the advice of the DPP and the Attorney General who advised the then Taoiseach, Deputy G. FitzGerald, that one day that amendment would legalise abortion in Ireland, which it has. Abortion is now permitted at any time during a pregnancy if the woman is declared suicidal or if her life is perceived to be endangered, it is a disgraceful consequence that women advanced in pregnancy beyond the time in which abortion is permitted in Britain could come to Ireland for an abortion if they fulfil our criteria regarding danger to the life of the mother.
Why not rectify it?
I ask the electorate to be careful about taking the advice from pro-life people a second time. We do not want to get into another mess.
In relation to economic and monetary union many of the benefits we might have obtained from a single currency will not now be available because of Britain's decision to opt out. Britain is still our largest trading partner and the only EC member country with which we have a common Border. A single currency has huge advantages for most countries in the Community. Therefore some risks but the risks to Ireland are minuscule by comparison with the risks to strong EC currencies and in particular the Deutsche Mark.
The most obvious benefit of a single currency is the removal of currency exchange costs. Anybody who has travelled within the Community will know how much money is lost exchanging from one currency to another. This loss is a significant disincentive to tourism. The only people who benefit by it are bankers and they do not favour a single currency. The cost of transferring currency into the other 11 currencies and back again is about 55 per cent of the value of the original currency. Implications for the business sector include currency exchange costs, currency exchange risks which are a disincentive to business and the sizeable administration costs attached to operating in several different currencies.
One factor largely overlooked in relation to a single currency which will bring benefits to a weak economy like ours is the impact upon interest rates. A single currency automatically means a single interest rate across the Community. Our interest rates have been maintained at artificially high levels in order to retain capital, particularly foreign capital here. Interest rates will drop and there is general agreement on that. What will that mean in cash terms? The national debt is about £26 billion. A drop of 1 per cent in interest rates would reduce the cost of servicing that debt by roughly £260 million per year; 1 per cent is not the maximum drop possible in interest rates. Add to £260 million the combined indebtedness of industry, agriculture, home owners and private citizens and the figure is much greater. A drop in interest rates will be of huge economic benefit to us.
The corollory of these implications is that a "no" vote will send signals to the money markets causing a flood of money out of the country, which in order to retain we would have to increase our interest rates. We would also be sending the wrong signal to foreign based industries here who employ over 90,000 people not to mention the negative signal we would send to companies we hope to attract here. It would sound the death knell to any prospect of attracting new industry into the country.
There are many other advantages to a single currency but one disadvantage often mentioned cannot be ignored. We will lose all sovereignty in relation to monetary matters but we need not lose much sleep over that. We never had much anyway. We had no sovereignty until 1979 when we broke with sterling. Decisions up to then on monetary matters were made in London. After breaking with sterling we entered the EMS and our sovereignty has been constrained since then.
Monetary union would be of enormous benefit to us, curtailed somewhat by Britain's decision to remain outside the Union. European Union is also about cohesion, a new word which everybody takes to mean that we are going to be as rich as the Germans in no time. That is not true but reducing the prosperity gap is an admirable objective. In stark terms if our economy was to grow at twice the average European growth rate, it would take us 30 years to catch up with the Danes and 28 years to catch up with the Germans. We must be honest and let people know that we are not going to enter that league in the lifetime of most Members in this House, and perhaps of younger people succeeding us.
Without the objective, the Cohesion Fund and the Structural Funds, we would all be worse off. In relation to the Cohesion Fund — I doubt if we will get the £6 billion referred to — and Structural Funds, even if doubled to £1,200 million, Common Agricultural Policy reforms will cost us in total about £500 million. There will be compensatory payments for a limited time but there is no point in trying to kid the public that we will be as rich as the Germans if we sign this. We have used the Structural Funds allocated to us reasonably well.
The funds must be looked on as a means to an end, but too many people in this country see them as an end in themselves. The end must be the building up of our economy, the creation of extra employment, the improvement of our environment, health care, standard of living, housing, education, etc. I can hardly count the number of inquiries I had about grants and loans during my five years in the European Parliament. In those same five years I had only one inquiry about market prospects in the Community. That is a shocking indictment of our attitude towards the Community.
The ultimate importance of the Community lies in the markets it makes available, not the hand-outs we can get. The hand-outs are important, but the ultimate objective is to develop our economy and sell into that market of 323 million people in the Community, when we add in the EFTA countries we have over 350 million people. That should be our attitude.
I am very glad to see this. As Senators are probably aware, quite wealthy countries were making a lot of use of the Structural Funds up to now, using them in the poorer regions like Scotland, the south of Italy, etc. The new cohesion Fund is being restricted to four countries but I regret to say the other part of this island will not qualify. That will put a barrier between us and them. We will benefit but the northern part of our country will not, because it comes under another jurisdiction. The provisions on education, culture etc., are important. First, I will deal with an area which causes problems for many people — foreign and security policy. A number of people, particularly in Cork, are claiming that this is will bring about a common defence policy, that we will have no say in it that conscription will be imposed on us, and so on. Of course that is not true. Before anything can happen in that area there will have to be another review of the situation by the heads of Government in 1996. In relation to foreign, security and defence policies, no decisions can be made, except on the basis of a unanimous vote. In other words, we have the right to veto but whether we use it is another matter.
The public should know that they are not being put into a situation where they will lose their neutrality without having a say in the matter. I honestly believe that, if it comes to that, we will have to have the right to have a referendum on the issue in 1996.
I know they are quoting chapter and verse, back and forth, and it makes difficult reading, to say the least, because it is not very well written. I would point to the countries whose ideological neutrality was stronger than ours — Sweden, Austria and more recently Switzerland and Finland. Sweden, Finland and Austria have applied to join and Switzerland will be making its mind up shortly. These are the countries that the anti-Europe people were pointing out to me in 1987 when we were having the referendum on the Single European Act. I was told time and again that we should stay outside like Austria, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland, that we would be better off and could retain our neutrality.
The public might be consoled to know that these countries are now applying for membership, post-Maastricht. They had no say in the Maastricht Treaty. What is in the Maastricht Treaty does not seem to worry them with regard to their neutrality. It should also be said, as Senator Conroy said, that Europe, and indeed the world, has changed dramatically in recent years with the dismantling of the Soviet Union, COMECON and the Warsaw Pact. Neutrality, as we knew it during the Cold War and the Second World War, now has an entirely different meaning.
Another area which concerns me is that of judicial co-operation for the purpose of fighting terrorism and drug trafficking. When the internal borders and all systematic checking at internal borders go, it will be very important that the external borders should be properly sealed. That, in effect, means that we have the huge task of keeping drugs from landing on our coastline. Once landed, they could then be transported, without systematic checking, to the big markets for drugs in the Community. It is obvious to anybody who knows the geography of Ireland that we have long and largely uninhabited coastline which is extremely suitable for landing small craft transporting drugs. It behoves the Community to give us a lot of help and resources to prevent drugs from getting into the Community via Ireland. That help could be in the form of spotter aircraft, helicopters and satellites. I can see no reason satellites would not be used to do that if they are used to examine crops, ships, etc. We need to seek urgent help and resources from the Community to prevent Ireland from being used as a back door to get drugs into the Community. Inevitably, as they came through Ireland, some people would be very happy to distribute some of them here too.
With regard to the democratic deficit, as an ex-member of the European Parliament, I am glad the powers of the European Parliament will be increased significantly, although not as much as the European Parliament would like. The Parliament will be granted the right under the so-called cohesion procedure to reject proposed legislation in a number of areas, such as the Internal Market, education, culture, trans-European networks, research and development and the environment. The procedure also provides for a conciliation committee bringing together the Council and the Parliament in an endeavour to reach agreement.
The areas where the assent of the Parliament is required, at present confined to association agreements and accession of new member states to the Community, will be extended and will now include the appointment of the Commission, the arrangements for a uniform electoral system for direct elections to the Parliament itself and the settling of the tasks, objectives and organisation of the Structural Funds.
The Parliament's role will be enhanced by a formal right of inquiry on alleged contraventions or maladministration, the capacity to receive petitions from Community citizens and the right to call the Commission to initiate legislation where it considers Community action is required.
The Parliament will be able to appoint a Community ombudsman to examine maladministration by the Community institutions. This is an important development but it also brings with it important obligations. If our MEPs are to do their job properly they must have better help from the Government than I got during my period under two successive Governments. The briefing we got was always too late. Instead of getting it before committee meetings, we got it on the day of the vote, or the day before the vote was to be taken at Strasbourg, which was pointless. I am sorry to say that, during the second Administration, the person who had responsibility for European Affairs never met any MEPs except the Fianna Fáil MEPs. That is not good enough. When the Parliament is given increased powers it will behove whatever Government are in power to do a better briefing job. It will be vital that MEPs receive better briefing than they had between 1984 and 1989.
Structural Funds will not only be increased but there will be greater flexibility in how they can be used. What is even more important is that there will also be greater flexibility with regard to matching funds. This is particularly important for poor countries like Ireland and Greece.
I hope the Structural Funds will be increased significantly and, when they are, it will be up to us to make the maximum use of them. As the previous speaker said, we must use them to build up our economic activity.
To those who are continually saying the Community has done nothing for us, that we have nearly 300,000 people unemployed, as a previous speaker said, if we were not in the Community, if we had not had access to the Community funds in the past 20 years, if we had not had access to the markets of the Community in the past 20 years, the situation would be significantly worse. The 90,000 people employed in foreign-owned industries in this country would probably not have employment here because we would not have been able to attract such companies. The people who are employed because of Structural Funds would not have jobs if we had not been getting these funds. People should remember that has happened since we joined the Community. Since 1970, approximately 100,000 people have left Ireland. In that time also, we have had two major oil crises. We have also had married woman coming into the workforce and, above all, we have had the information technology revolution which has literally destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs, particularly in the services sector.
The Economic and Social Research Institute has pointed out the benefits and the number of jobs created by the Structural Funds in the past 20 years. For the period up to the year 2000 they point out that an extra 55,000 jobs can result from the Maastricht Treaty and the increased Structural Funds. We should also bear in mind that, despite a high level of unemployment, there are 72,000 more people in work now than when we joined in 1973. People tend to forget that the population of this country has increased since the early seventies by roughly half a million people. In addition, we have the largest proportion of young people of any country in the Community coming onto the labour force. While it is unfortunate we did not make more of our opportunities in the Community, nevertheless I and any honest commentator would have to say that if we were not in the EC we would be much worse off. My reservations, as I have already said previously in this House have to do with the amount of help we are going to get and the fact that our agriculture is being decimated by the new proposals. I have found one small consolation in Article 130B in relation to cohesion, where it is pointed out that Community policies, including the Structural Funds, the Cohesion Fund and the guidance section of the Common Agricultural Policy, will be used to bring about cohesion. Additionally there will be a review every three years of the progress of cohesion and the Commission will be asked to introduce changes if the objective of bringing about cohesion is not being achieved. Those are comforting words, whether comforting actions will follow or not.
My party has always been the most pro-European party in this country. We will be supporting this referendum and I now know that other parties are, happily, behind it also. I do not know which parties are not behind it. The CII, the Congress of Trade Unions, the IFA, the ICMSA and so on also support it. I am confident we will get a good majority but it would be dangerous to be complacent.
First, because I did not get the opportunity before, I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Ahern, here today. I welcome him here particularly because I served in the Seanad with his father many years ago and I had a great friendship with him. I canvassed for him and voted for him a long time ago, long before I came in here. When I came into the House, I was particularly close to him, and as a traditionalist, which indeed I am, I want to say how pleased I am that the Minister is doing so well. I hope there is great success in store for him in the future. I am very pleased he is here today.
Senator Raftery is a man I have taken a great interest in over the years. I used to read his contributions when he was in the European Parliament and they were excellent. I always had great hopes for Senator Raftery because, at that time, he said something new and something very good. I was very sorry when he was beaten in the election for the European Parliament. I felt he should not have been defeated and he was let down badly by his own party. He did not do himself a service today, I am sorry to say, by taking a cheap shot, in a dismissive way, of pro-life people. He was dismissive of what they are doing. I want to tell Senators about pro-life people, they are very committed and dedicated people and they are in every party. He said he resented people saying they are pro-life. Pro-life people are not saying they are any better than anybody else. When they say they are pro-life, they are merely stating a fact. That is what they are and why should anybody resent it?
We are all pro-life.
You will get the opportunity of proving that.
Senator Hanafin, without interruption, please.
Let him interrupt if it makes him happy.
Acting Chairman
I would appreciate if the Senator would not provoke interruptions either. Please continue.
I am like the Acting Chairman, gentle and mild. I never provoke anything.
I would also like to refer to the speech made here this morning by the Taoiseach. I could comment on many points but I will refer to just one area. I found it strange that he should say the women of Ireland would ensure by a "yes" vote they will not be downgraded to second-class European citizens. That is rubbish. If it falls here, or falls in Denmark, the Maastricht Treaty falls all over Europe and we still remain a member of the EC.
One point I would like to refer to is where he said there is absolutely no issue of conscience involved in either supporting this legislation or voting "yes" in the referendum on European union itself. It is nice to have somebody who is prepared to act as the conscience for all of us. Again, in the speech, the Taoiseach said any arguments we put forward are based on bad advice. I feel that is a slur on the personal and professional integrity of a clearly identifiable person. I would suggest there is indeed bad advice, but we are not the people getting it.
I am going to oppose this Bill and in doing so I differ with my party and my colleagues. I regret differing with my colleagues and it is, therefore, necessary for me to explain as simply as I can my reasons for taking this course. These reasons have to do with the clear implications of the Maastricht Treaty for abortion law in Ireland, and for our ability in the future to vote effectively to protect the rights of life before birth.
At the outset, however, I would like to make a general point in regard to the debate on this Bill as it passes through both Houses. It seems to me that democracy is not well served by a situation in which none of the main political parties oppose the measure. The ratification of an international agreement with such enormous implications for the future of Ireland, constitutionally and socially as well as economically, should surely be accompanied by the most wide-ranging public and parliamentary debate. However, when all the major parties support the measure, few of the very many areas of public concern about these implications are given expression in either House. The Opposition parties have an obligation to recognise that such concerns exist and to articulate some of them, at least in this House which was intended to provide scope for that kind of review.
May I add that this lack of real debate is all the more worrying in the light of the extraordinarily wide nature of the constitutional amendment we are being asked to put before the people. We are not simply being asked to ratify the Maastricht Treaty, as would be achieved by enacting the proposed Article 29.4.4. We are also being asked to approve Article 29.4.5 which has consequences going far beyond the mere ratification of Maastricht. It will be sufficient for me to quote the words of Paul Callan, Senior Counsel, who, in last Sunday's Sunday Tribune wrote as follows:
In that Article (29.4.5) we are asked, in effect, whether we wish to waive the protection of the Constitution, weaken the powers of the Oireachtas and remove the jurisdiction of the courts in respect of the domestic effects of all acts of the European Union, even of those which lie outside the extended powers of the Community and the Court of Justice.
Mr. Callan goes on to argue that one of the many results of such a sweeping amendment would be that the authority of the other House, under the Constitution, to veto the participation of Ireland in any war would be superseded by the constitutional immunity given to all acts of the proposed Union.
He concludes that:
It is clearly desirable that the people should not vote on an amendment of such far-reaching significance without a thorough analysis of the consequences.
My point in all this is that such an analysis is not facilitated if the main parties are of one mind on the issue. I put it to Fine Gael, as the largest Opposition party, that they have a duty to the people in this regard, a duty which they have not discharged. I believe that the Maastricht Treaty referendum should have been deferred until the issues arising from the Supreme Court judgment in the "X" case have been resolved. This is because the ratifying of the Maastricht Treaty first has clear and undeniable implications for abortion law in Ireland. Let me explain these implications.
First, the European Court has already declared that abortion is an economic service under EC law. The Maastricht Treaty seeks to further harmonise the availablity of economic services throughout the proposed Union. Second, the Maastricht Treaty requires the proposed Union to take on board the European Convention of Human Rights. The prevalence of legalised abortion throughout the other European countries means that it is very likely that the Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg will interpret the Convention as conferring a right to abortion. After Maastricht such an interpretation would have to be accepted by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, and thus abortion could, in effect, be imposed on Ireland.
Third, there is the question of the Maastricht Protocol. I want to say something about this as it was central to much of the argument in the weeks following the Supreme Court judgment. The Protocol, a condition attached to the Treaty, was negotiated by the then Taoiseach and Minister for Foreign Affairs last November. It was sought by the Irish Government, and agreed by our European partners, precisely because all recognised that the Maastricht Treaty would have implications in the abortion area. Our Government, and the other 11, acknowledged that without such a Protocol the Irish constitutional ban on abortion could be overturned by Europe. How then can it be said that Maastricht has nothing to do with abortion? It is obvious that the Treaty has abortion implications, and that these were recognised by all concerned during the negotiation of the Treaty itself.
I would now like to move forward to the "X" case, and the momentous Supreme Court judgment of 5 March this year. The Supreme Court read into the Constitution a right of abortion which I believe no Member of the Oireachtas thought to exist. Did any of us who voted in the 1983 referendum, on either side, seriously think that the Eighth Amendment could be so interpreted? Were we not certain, whatever our views, that, as a result of the referendum abortion could not be legalised in Ireland without a further decision by the people? I do not think it unreasonable to say that this was a perverse decision. It has overthrown the clearly expressed will of the people, and something has to be done about it.
It is a matter of great regret to me, and a matter of dismay to many people throughout the country, that the Government did not accept at once that the issue should be referred back to the people. The intervention of Mr. Justice O'Hanlon — whose dismissal from the Law Reform Commission I deplore — was to urge that, in justice, the people might be given an opportunity again to express their views on the matter but at no stage has there been anything to suggest that the Government intend to put the issue to the people. It has seemed that, at all costs, they want to avoid that path.
Both Progressive Democrat Cabinet members are opposed to a pro-life referendum — one of them said yesterday that such an amendment was not feasible. Some Ministers has said that the words cannot be found to reverse the Supreme Court decision, others say that if we try to roll back the Supreme Court decision we will be threatening the rights and even the lives of mothers. I believe both of these statements are absurd. I do not see why we should not look more closely at the Supreme Court decision, or more particularly at what was said during the case.
The Supreme Court took the view that the words of the pro-life amendment allowed abortion, but the judges did not come to this view on their own. Counsel for the Attorney General made the point for them. Why did he do that? Let us look at the words of the Eighth Amendment:
The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.
The phrases "with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother", and "as far as practicable", were inserted in 1983 to make sure that doctors would continue to do what they have always done, that is, to treat mothers for any and every condition arising during pregnancy, even when such treatment might have consequences for the baby.
Established medical practice has always been that mothers may not be denied necessary treatment because they are pregnant. The treatment might be simple, but it might also involve antibiotics or more dangerous drugs, even radiation treatment. Some of these treatments might harm, or even cause the death of the unborn child, but they have never been forbidden on that account. The law in Ireland and everywhere else has always seen a key difference between acts which are intended to harm the child and acts which are intended to help the mother but may have the undesired effect of harming the unborn child. Necessary medical treatment for the mother, even those which have the secondary, unintended, effect of the death of the child have always been lawful here and elsewhere. Such treatments have not been regarded in law or in medicine as abortions.
Unnecessary fears were raised in 1983 that if the amendment were passed, such treatments would no longer be possible and that women might be put at risk and some members of the then Government tried to frighten Irish women into voting against the amendment for that reason. However, these fears were groundless. Medical practice was not changed. Mothers continue to be cared for. Women did not die as a result of the pro-life amendment.
It seems to me that counsel for the Attorney General did not see the difference between the direct killing of the unborn baby, and the death of the baby when this results indirectly from the necessary medical treatment of the mother. I do not think the Supreme Court understood the point either. The court went on to accept that if the amendment allowed abortion, then abortion could also be permitted in the case of a sufficiently strong threat to commit suicide. In other words, the court made a huge jump from those perfectly lawful treatments where the loss of the child arises indirectly from treatment of the mother, to allowing — what has always been unlawful — a direct attack on the unborn child itself. This was a complete perversion of the purpose of the amendment and of what we all thought it meant.
For the first time in the history of the State, the highest court in the land had decreed that what we would regard as an innocent third party should be put to death. Lest there be any doubt about it, it must be repeated that mothers do not die in Ireland because abortion is not available. All the experts agree that the direct killing of the unborn child is never necessary to save a mother's life. Anyone, even a party leader, who implies that abortion is necessary to protect the lives of mothers, has no medical facts whatsoever to back up that argument. If such statements were true, then there should be evidence in the form of a greater number number of maternal deaths in this country than in other countries where abortion is legal. Such evidence does not exist.
In 1990, there were 20,424 live births in Dublin's three main maternity hospitals. Two mothers died. As a percentage figure, this is almost exactly the same as that for Britain and is lower than that for the United States and in both those countries, abortion has been freely available for many years. Therefore, if abortion was necessary to save women's lives the Irish rates of maternal deaths should be much higher, but that is not the case.
These are the facts. Abortion is never necessary for medical reasons and suicide is an extremely rare occurrence during pregnancy. Leading psychiatrists say they have never met a woman with suicidal tendencies during pregnancy who could not be treated just as someone who was not pregnant would be treated. Yet, our Supreme Court said that as a young girl had threatened suicide the life of her unborn child could be terminated. No medical or psychiatric evidence was called and the girl herself was never seen or questioned by the court.
This was a dreadful decision and it cries out to be reversed, not to be taken on board and made the law of the land. To do so would be to make a mockery of the decision of the people in 1983 to reject abortion. There should be a referendum which would give people the opportunity if they so wished to restore the sense of Article 40.3.3º of the Constitution to what it was believed to be before the Supreme Court judgment. I do not believe we got it wrong in 1983, but the amendment we then enacted to prevent abortion has been misread to allow it. To say that we cannot correct it would be to say we cannot find the words with which to rule out the intentional killing of unborn children without, at the same time, interfering with the medical practice of over a century. This is nonsense; of course, it can be done. The problem is more with the will to do so rather than with finding the way.
Some Members of the Oireachtas believe we should allow the Supreme Court decision to stand and accept limited abortion in Ireland. What possible compulsion is there on us to follow a path that has proved so disastrous in many other countries?
I have urged that the abortion question be cleared up before the Maastricht poll. The reason is obvious, a change in Article 40.3.3º will not have the protection of the Protocol which only applies to the present text. After the ratification of the Treaty it would be virtually impossible to secure a new Protocol to prevent a revised Article being overturned in Europe. We would have to persuade our eleven European partners to re-open the Protocol question and effectively to make a second Treaty to protect the outcome of an abortion referendum.
It has been said that this new Treaty would have to be ratified by all the member states, and may indeed require another referendum in Denmark. Once Maastricht is passed there would be little incentive for our partners to co-operate. The solemn assurance is only a political hope, not a legal guarantee. The Government might argue at that stage that there would be little point in holding a referendum. If we had held the abortion referendum first, that is before Maastricht, we could then have gone in strength to Europe and insisted on the necessary Protocol before agreeing to ratify the Treaty.
There was no urgency whatsoever about the Maastricht referendum. The ratification process does not have to be completed by any specific date. The earliest the Treaty can come into force is January 1933, but then only if every country has ratified it. The Government have proceeded in a manner which has inevitably linked the issues of abortion with the Maastricht Treaty itself. Nothing compelled the Government to act in this way and the power to disentangle the issues has always been in their own hands.
It seems their is a fundamental principle involved here to an independent people we must be able to ensure that whatever protection we decide to accord in our Constitution to life before birth cannot be undermined or overturned by any external court or institution. By going ahead with the Maastricht poll while leaving this issue unresolved the Government are, wrongly, forcing many people to choose between principle and supposed economic advantage. No one should be coerced into placing a price on the value of the lives of the unborn. If this unwarranted, unnecessary choice is forced on us, I believe the reply of many will be that those unborn lives have a value that is priceless.
I do not wish to criticise Senator Hanafin. For one thing, he and I are likely to find ourselves at the end of the Second Stage unlikely bedfellows, if that is not an unparliamentary term but I think his contribution will be more appropriate to business in this House later in the year.
One of the things I deplore is that people have led themselves to believe that the wretched business about the Protocol and so on is a substantive issue in this fundamental Treaty we are all being asked to consider. I do not believe, whether we vote "yes" or "no", that this part of it will make the slightest difference to our European partners. The continentals could not give a continental damn whether we want abortion or do not want it; they regard us as a nuisance. It is part of our insular vanity to think all Europe is agog with these great issues which Senator Hanafin has outlined.
The confusion of the general public is very considerable in this matter. They find it very hard — and I share their confusion — to understand how at once, let us say, the Well Woman people, the pro-choice people, can regard the endorsement of this Treaty as unacceptable to them or as presenting a threat to them; and how the people represented by Senator Hanafin can equally see the endorsement of the Treaty as a threat to their point of view. Nor can they understand why the Taoiseach and the Attorney General have said, in effect, to the people: if you say "yes" there will not be any more injunctions. How can the Taoiseach possibly draw that inference? If I were to vote a "yes"— I am in fact voting "no"— it would be for the substantive issues. How could the Taoiseach interpret my vote as an instruction to him no longer to proceed with injunctions? It is only part of the problem we are now faced with from the wretched confusion of the side issue of abortion in the context of this debate with the huge issues on which we have to decide.
The Irish Times poll the other day showed the extent of this confusion — 32 per cent undecided at this stage. That must be totally unprecedented. Nearly a quarter of those people surveyed had no opinion when asked what the referendum was about. The number who equated the issue with abortion, who said Maastricht was about abortion, which was 24 per cent, was almost as great as those who equated it with what it really is about — closer European union — 26 per cent. I really am infuriated by what I would call this double red herring of abortion. As I suggest, it is a debate for later on in the year.
I agree with Senator Hanafin that all this mess could have been avoided if the more sensible course has been adopted to take the abortion issues before the endorsement of the Treaty, for which, after all, Senator Hanafin says there is no great hurry. The abortion question has distracted us from the main issues which, God knows, are hard enough for people to understand — issues like monetary union, the Cohesion Fund, changes in foreign policy, all very abstruse issues.
Are you finished talking about me?
I will talk about you later on. As I said, this is not the occasion for it. Anyway, you would want to pray to abate your considerable vanity.
Acting Chairman
The Senator should not provoke interruptions.
All these issues would have required much elucidation if the abortion issue had never taken place. It is the Government's task to inform debate. If this is the most important debate since the foundation of the State then it is the Government's task to lead that debate, to inform that debate. They cannot blame all the confusion on the hubbub about abortion or on the postal strike. Presumably they will make a push in the months ahead, but will it be an attempt to enlighten the public or to bamboozle them with propaganda? So far, it seems to me, what the Government and the main Opposition parties are saying is: "This is a very important issue. We have already decided it for you. Now you must go and endorse it". They are not actually asking the people to make up their minds. They are, as it were, looking for a rubber stamp decision. Yet, the Constitution is quite clear about the supremacy of the people in this matter. "If there is one thing shining and clear throughout this whole Constitution," said Eamon de Valera in introducing it in 1937, "it is the fact that people are the masters". It is the Government's duty to tell the people not only what the pros are but what the cons are as well and let them make up their mind. It is for the people to make the decision, not simply to acquiesce in a decision already made.
That leads me to my very strong contention that it is the Government's duty to so inform debate that the people hear both sides of the story. I believe the Government have a constitutional and moral obligation to fund this kind of information. I made that point as well in the context of the 1987 Single European Act when I brought up the matter on the Adjournment after the referendum. When I showed from comparative sources — the United States and England — that governments do have the duty of funding an even-handed information campaign, which our Government totally ignored in the SEA referendum and which they are likely to ignore here as well, my argument on the occasion was treated with considerable disdain and deplorable facetiousness by the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Lenihan. The arguments I made are, I submit, as valid now as they were then.
I have cited the example of the United Kingdom in 1975 when Government made available to the people at their own expense arguments for and against closer movement towards the European Community. One argument was made by Roy Jenkins and the other by Michael Foot, representing the two sides of Labour. I submit that the Government have failed in their duty here if they do not finance the presentation of both sides of the case — that is, if they want the people to make up their mind on 18 June, but the evidence so far is that the people are not being treated in an adult and responsible fashion.
The pro-Maastricht people complain that the anti-Maastrichteers — if I may coin a phrase — have engaged in lurid scaremongering about the neutrality and defence issue, conjuring up visions of overnight conscription, etc., and I would have to agree that these are somewhat grotesque exaggerations, but the Government and the pro Maastricht camp generally have been guilty also of scaremongering tactics, indulging in the rhetoric of fear and greed, the Taoiseach crudely spelling out the price of Irish independence, the mess of pottage for which we are to sell our birthright. It may well be said of him yet what was said of those who engineered another Union: "How did they pass the Union? With perjury and fraud, with men who sold their land for gold as Judas sold his God".
The notorious £6 billion figure is looking more and more unlikely at this stage. The whole presentation of all or nothing — say "yes" and we will get £6 billion; say "no" and we will get nothing — is grossly dishonest. Only yesterday at a joint EC Committee those who had come back from Portugal, where there had been a conference of European Community Parliamentary Committees, reported to us the ominous rumblings there from delegates from places like Germany, who said that ordinary taxpayers in Germany were more and more in revolt against the idea of increased taxation in order to fund increased Structural Funds. Despite this, the Taoiseach tells us that the consequences of saying "yes" will be £6 billion and the consequences of saying "no" will be isolation, pariah status, apparently he even suggested associate membership at one stage. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy David Andrews, somewhat more poetically, tells us that if we neglect this tide the rest of our lives will be spent in shallows and miseries — actually he did not say it as poetically as that.
The Taoiseach threatens and cajoles women to vote "yes", and I do not have to underline that point. Then there is the arch Euro-enthusiast, Deputy Garrett FitzGerald, describing opponents of Maastricht as eccentrics bordering on the lunatic — nice parliamentary language that, coming from the architect of considerable economic disaster in the mid-1980s.
The conduct of the campaign does not inspire confidence so far but I want to move on to the merits and demerits of the Treaty itself. I am not an economist but I am not impressed by the glib promises. The paymasters will be reluctant to accede to Jacques Delors' request for a 30 per cent increase. Even if the increase comes about, there is going to be intense competition for the funds by the other three of what are lamentably now called the Poor Four in the Community. The people of Ireland would be very well advised to cast a cold eye on this particular pie in the sky. Even if we get all the £6 billion, would it be compensation for the losses to the economy which would be an inevitable, part of the Union? No matter now generous Cohesion Funds will be in the future will they balance the operation of the natural laws of the free market economy and what I might call the centripetal thrust, namely, the further enrichment of the core at the expense of the periphery, which is a natural consequence of capitalism?
In my view, there is no way this can be stopped. It was not stopped from 1800 to 1922 under the Union with Great Britain. Under that Union we enjoyed at least the benefits of fiscal union, with a single budget and unitary taxation; but that did not stop the peripheral decay any more than it does at the moment in our own economy where Dublin thrives and the west decays. It would be very foolish to presume that, no matter how generous Cohesion Funds will be, they will compensate for this natural law of economics under the free market system.
Then there is the worrying factor that we are going to be told how to handle our budgets and what ratio of borrowing to gross domestic product and so on we will have to be observe. This constrains our remaining freedom of action in budgetary matters and arguably will have a considerable deflation rate impact on our already depressed economy.
We are not ready for that drastic step to economic union. We need more time, for one thing, to improve the national economy before we make a jump in the dark like this. It may well be, despite the current discrediting of communism and socialism, that there is a good argument for saying that perhaps what this country needs is a mobilisation of the total national resources in the national interest. The fact that for entirely different historical reasons the experiment was a disastrous failure in eastern Europe does not mean it could not be tried here — and I take it that that is what the parties of the Left stand for. Under a European Economic Union we will no longer have the independence to ring the changes on our economic strategy; we will be very much locked in to a monetarist strategy.
Pro union spokespeople have tarred the Opposition with an anti-European brush. They have deliberately posed a quite false antithesis between being total union and total isolationist. The other day I think it was Deputy FitzGerald again who made a grand speech about European civilisation and how important it was that we appreciate this, etc. No one disputes that. I am tired of listening to people telling us that we are the rich heirs of European civilisation, or that there has not been a war in western Europe for 40 years. That is no reason we should take this further step here. I am all for European civilisation, I am delighted that Europe does not tear itself apart any more, I am delighted that barriers to all kinds of progress have been removed but they are not valid reasons for making this quantum leap. Economically, I suggest, we are not fit yet to do that.
Culturally, even though I admire our European partners in many respects, apart from their imperialist ventures, I do not want to share citizenship with them. I do not want to be a citizen of Europe. I do not want to be a citizen of a multinational super-state where enormous cultural differences exist between component parts. In my view a united states of Europe is a nonsense, a new Tower of Babel.
By the way, I was not going to talk any more about Senator Hanafin to indulge his enormous vanity. If this whole abortion question were resolved, presumably he would leap into the arms of Europeans. He would get into bed, if I may use the phrase, with these degenerates, these post-Christian degenerates, these abortionists, these pornographers and so on. If we really think Europeans are degenerates, as the pro-life people do, we should not even think of joining them. Anyway, I owe no allegiance to a united states of Europe. I have no wish to be anything other than a citizen of Ireland. I greatly cherish my green passport for the remaining two years of its life.
Going back for a moment to the economic argument and the simplifications that have been made, I would recommend Paul Tansey's article in The Sunday Tribune of 10 May, in which, although he is an enthusiastic pro-union person, he answers the question: could Ireland be ejected from the European Community even if it disagrees with all the others on the union question? He says absolutely not, we would still remain a full member and participate fully in the drive for a Single Market, etc. I admire his honesty for not simplifying the issue in that way.
I understand Senator Hanafin, when he was not talking about his hobby horse, referred to another article in The Sunday Tribune, of last week which has been developed elsewhere, namely, that the new Treaty proposes to give powers to the European union far beyond what is necessary to endorse the Treaty and that there are Titles in the union which will not be amenable not alone to our courts but to the European courts. This is surely a very rash act of faith in a totally unknown future, particularly where a common foreign security policy is concerned and when developments there by the mid-1990s need not necessarily be subject to another referendum. In general this part of the Treaty giving new competence to the union undermines the courts and the Oireachtas and brings in question Dáil Éireann's right to veto our participation in a war. These reasons are compelling enough really to oppose the Treaty without any other consideration.
On neutrality, when people accuse us of being isolationist may I say once again that what is at issue here is not staying out of conflict. I have all my life been a champion of neutrality. What I mean by that is our right to have our own world view on many issues which do not coincide with our European partners because we have had a different historical experience. That is what I am afraid will go under — not alone that we will drift insensibly towards a defence pact but that we will merge totally in a common foreign security policy which would be dictated by the big powers. England and France, for example, apart from their possession of nuclear weapons which would make it very morally difficult for me to agree to anything like a security policy which involves these obscenities, have made it perfectly clear that they are going to observe their own respective national interests. The week after Maastricht a new UK Ambassador in Washington made it clear that England would continue to safeguard its own vital national interests and M. Dumas told the French National Assembly the same kind of thing — never fear, French national interests will maintain. Who on our side has said that the Irish national interest will prevail? I fear we are going there losing whatever residual personality we have in the international field. The White Paper grossly understates the foreign policy implications of the union.
I have great misgivings on all these grounds — the incompetent and inadequate presentation of the issues; the huge question marks over the availability of the Structural Funds and the size of the funds; the crude propaganda of greed employed by the Government; the deleterious future effects on budgeting; the failure of the Government to fulfil their obligation of financial fair play in presenting the case; the quantum leap to union; the immunity of new competences; the final erosion of neutrality; the downgrading of the institutions of our Parliament and our courts. If we endorse Maastricht, we emasculate the Constitution. We make all that struggle for sovereignty a nonsense. As de Valera said in 1937 in proudly introducing his Constitution, "Is comadh lá a bhí muintir na tíre ag feitheamh le lá mar seo." What would he say to this total reversal of his central preoccupation with sovereignty? Go bhfóire Dia orainn.
If we endorse Maastricht we are saying in effect we cannot govern ourselves, we give up, we appeal to the European gentry to look after us. We make a nonsense of Article 9.2 of the Constitution which enjoins loyalty to the State and fidelity to the nation on every citizen. We confound Wolfe Tone's dictum when he said "If we are once afloat we can take care of ourselves; if not, we deserve to sink." If we vote for Maastricht we reverse the vision of Thomas Davis, because under European union it will be a case of "Ireland long a nation being a province once again." I urge in particular my fellow Independents to vote "no" to this Bill and I certainly will be advising my constituents to do so.
To commence my short contribution here this afternoon I would like to thank the Taoiseach for coming to the House and to warmly welcome also Minister O'Rourke. I was glad to hear the Taoiseach say at the commencement of his address this morning that the Seanad as a body, as well as individual Senators, make a significant contribution to our democracy and to more enlightened public debate and that its role and usefulness should not be denigrated. He added: "Most democratic countries have found that a second Chamber is part of the checks and balances every democracy needs to prevent it from becoming an elected dictatorship." I must say I have waited a long time for a Taoiseach to say that and I thank him for saying so.
We are a small nation on the edge of Europe. We have nearly 300,000 unemployed, something I, as an elected person, feel sad about. The only way we can put jobs in place for at least some of those people is within the EC. I ask everyone to vote "yes" on 18 June. Our freedom was secured for us in the past by people who are rarely referred to now. By remaining in the EC we will not lose any of our Irishness.
If I have one regret it is that over the years we may have lost some sovereignty in the EC concept, but since we are just a small island on the edge of Europe we cannot always dictate how much we give and what we take. I would like to say that it is not all about taking when we ask that the referendum on 19 June be passed. Long before the EC Ireland was sending its missionaries abroad and as a people we played a major role in the world. We contribute to Europe as well as receiving from it. Membership of the EC has not changed our people, even though most of them regard themselves as Europeans. However, we would be daft to say that our people are losing any of their Irishness. They have moved forward as Europeans. It has not lessened the goodness or the strong points in our people. As an elected person, I would also like to see us holding decision-making to ourselves as far as possible. Every elected person here, none more so than the present Minister, would accept that we should not be dictated to by Europeans and bureaucrats.
I cannot understand the confusion some women have in relation to this matter. They should look on the positive side. We legislate improvements for them. All the improvements in Irish legislation to the benefit of women are a direct result of our EC membership. The EC established equal opportunity programmes and promoted women's full participation in economic and social life. The new public health and education policies are the result of European guidance. We should talk about the positive rather than the negative side and the damage that might be done.
I welcome the fact that the Taoiseach and the Minister, Deputy Smith, are going to Rio to a conference on the environment. Helmut Kohl of Germany is just one leader who is only now aware I understand of the responsibilities that industrialised countries must accept as part of an international environmental partnership. We have become aware of that and are enacting the necessary legislation. Everybody in local government deals with this subject every day. At the Rio conference a great deal of emphasis will be placed on world forests. This is something I have had strong views on since my early days in public life but this is something which has a lower profile here now than it had in years gone by.
I believe decisions should still be taken at the closest level to the people. I have no trouble being a European and remaining an Irish nationalist but we get the impression that more decision making is being centralised in Brussels. From now on — and I am sure that is the intention of the Minister and the Government — we should ensure that decision making is done at home, not in Europe. I interrupt my contribution to welcome my constituency colleague, Minister Daly. I am glad he is here. I know that, at the moment, the EC has greater rights than any of us and that is a worry. I do not want to see decisions that should be made at regional level being taken in Brussels and I do not want Ministers to think that Senators, councillors, etc., are happy that we would not have a say. We saw this happen last year when the Structural Funds were divided. It was felt at that time that people did not have enough of an input. We have to be honest and accept what will come and what is needed to be done.
There are of course, increased Structural Funds, a new Cohesion Fund, extended policies in education, public health, environment, rights of European citizenship, new social policies, the European Monetary Union and the single currency, to meet certain targets regarding our inflation, the great need to reduce our national debt, etc. All this, I understand will be controlled by the European Central Bank working with our Central Bank. What power will our Central Bank have then? I read with some worry about the European System of Central Banks. The Treaty says that the governing council will include the governors of the national central banks and will be independent of national governments and that the banks will set EC monetary policy and put it into action. Here is where I have a worry. I have a holy horror of bank power and some of my colleagues would share that horror. What are we talking about here? Are we talking about a group of central banks in a European system with our governor of the Central Bank being a member and not having to account to our Government? I hope I am reading that wrong; I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am. The Taoiseach might have referred to that here this morning.
I understand that under the new European Treaty smaller industries will get a better chance and will have a bigger role to play. This I warmly welcome because I have held strong views on the way we treat small industry. I am glad the Minister, Deputy O'Malley, is threatening to look at the IDA, to see, whether the concept of that organisation should be changed. Down the years small firms and family firms did not get fair treatment. That is true, even now, when my own Government are in power — and I hope we will stay in power and that we will provide the next Government also.
I appreciate that big business was great ten or 20 years ago, but those boys packed up and hiked it the minute the going got hot, but small family businesses did not have that luxury. I cannot repeat that too often.
I warmly welcome the support of the two big unions, the ITGWU and SIPTU, who are asking their members, to vote "yes", the farmers, the ICMSA, Macra na Feirme, the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland and the CEEP. At long last there is one thing on which we are united, that is that the vote on 18 June should be for Ireland and we should vote "yes". I do not know the last time that group of bodies were together with a Fianna Fáil Government agreeing to vote the one way. It is great to see it.
The national priority is clear. It is to get the Maastricht Treaty safely ratified on 18 June. It is important that its ratification should not be delayed. Ratification is in the interest of all the people of this nation, for the development of industry, headage payments for farmers, which I referred to earlier, job creation and job training and the funding of third level courses. Tourism, of course, is very important to my constituency and indeed to the nation. It is the only area, apart from some solid industries, in which I see job creation. The powers-that-be would want to be quite careful about decisions they make this week or next week in areas that affect constituencies along the coast from Donegal to Waterford and also many midland constituencies when they are making a decision on the status of Shannon. It is a regional concept put in place by the late Sean Lemass and it should be left in place. If there is a monument to Lemass surely it is Shannon Airport. Up to 25,000 jobs would go in one swoop if we listened to Martin Dully and Colm Mullen. I will be deeply disappointed if the judgment of the Government is anything but what it should be. That is relevant to Maastricht.
Acting Chairman
I have my doubts.
A Europe without frontiers would give rise to exciting opportunities for free exchange of creative and intellectual arts. I welcome this because, as the Minister knows, I have close association at the moment with a threatre company. I hope that under this new concept of cultural affairs under the Department of Foreign Affairs, he will help some of those companies that made a success of their work and are playing a very important role, not just in their own areas but nationally.
I will turn now to a matter about which we all seem to have deep worries, the defence policy. The Irish people do not have to take any decision at this point about participating in a common defence policy, still less in a common defence. Any moves in that direction will require another Inter-Governmental Conference and further Treaty changes in some years time. In the meantime Ireland's position outside military alliances is fully respected and maintained. The other European neutrals can accept the Maastricht Treaty as a basis for seeking membership of a European union. It would be ironic if, at this time, when countries like Finland and Austria have decided to follow the Irish example, we tried to go in the opposite direction and become more neutral than the neutrals. There is no possibility that conscription would be imposed or introduced under the Maastricht Treaty. I would have worries as deep and views as strong on our neutral position in this nation as anybody elected to this distinguished House. I would suggest at this point that when we get Maastricht out of our way perhaps we would have a debate on neutrality. I am sure it is something that Minister Daly and Minister Andrews would welcome such a debate in the Seanad. It is sad that people are making statements to the effect that there is a challenge to us and that we will be swept into a defence concept without the Government coming back to us if we vote "yes" on 18 June. Here this afternoon we had an Independent Senator again saying there is no protection in this Maastricht Treaty and that we may in the future find ourselves in a military alliance without another vote. That is wrong. If Senator Brendan Ryan is right let the Minister, Deputy Daly, tell us tomorrow. If he is wrong, as I think he is, he should tell us and it will clear all lines.
The Irish people are proud about being a peacekeeping nation. I want to pay tribute to Commandant Colm Doyle of Sarsfield Barracks, Limerick for his courage and for the extraordinary role he has played in recent times in Europe. Often enough we do not pay tribute to the men in uniform. He is a serving commandant of our excellent Defence Forces and I understand he is at present Lord Carrington's representative in Yugoslavia. I would also like to pay tribute to his wife, Gráinne, who is here at home. I would like it to go on the record that I have paid a tribute to a peacekeeping member, wearing the Irish uniform so proudly, as we talk about defence policies, peacekeeping forces and so on this afternoon.
Years ago the EC Social Fund had money for positive projects like funding of units for mentally handicapped children. That seems to be gone by the board. I hope some of the new funding that will come onstream as a result of this will be used to help people who work in the voluntary area for mentally handicapped children and young adults.
I wish to refer to Dr. Tony Ryan of GPA Shannon who in a recent paper cited the example that in the new Europe we would have to overcome the costs and the time factor to remain competitive. Nobody is in a better position to tell us what is ahead of us when we have to compete than Dr. Tony Ryan. He had a paper which I asked for and got entitled "From here we need bridges". Dr. Ryan was referring to an air bridge from Shannon to Luxembourg. It was an excellent paper.
I remember years ago somebody close to me talked about bridges and ferries across the Shannon. It was many years ago when the Minister, Deputy Daly, was a young boy. The evening it was proposed at Clare County Council somebody thought the councillor in question was daft. However, Dr. Tony Ryan made this comment in his paper and we should listen to him. I want to thank him again for his extraordinary support for the west, for Tipperary and all the constituencies around him. With his success, he could have forgotten his roots but that is one thing Tony Ryan has not done, and I am grateful to him for that. Last evening he announced the setting up of another unit at Shannon at a cost of £7 million and with 400 jobs coming on stream. He knows how to compete in Europe and we should listen to him.
The issue of Structural Funds and the £6 billion seems to have dominated the debate. This is not what Maastricht is about. The vote on 18 June is not about buying or being bought; the Irish people can never be bought even if a figure of £6 billion is dangled in front of them. This is not about giving up our traditional values for £6 billion or any funding from Europe. That is not what we are voting on and let us be quite clear about it. I presume Senator Conroy understands finance. I do not but he gave figures today of the kind of money we are talking about.
I referred to what the vote is about and I know the people will vote the right way, not just for now but for generations to come. I know there will still be problems but as a nation we must have confidence in ourselves and trust each other to do the right thing and if there are hard times ahead, the elected representatives will be able to hand down to our successors a better and more confident nation than we inherited.
Jacques Delors in July talked about not enough information being fed back to the people in Ireland. Indeed he could have said the same thing this week because we have had an uphill battle and there has been confusion about this referendum because we do not talk enough or get enough information about Europe, with the result that we cannot relay it to the people who support us. I have never met Jacques Delors but he is a stateman and a politician I admire greatly.
We are trying to get agreement with the rest of Europe but how can we expect to achieve that if we cannot agree among ourselves? I would like to convince people that I am not asking them to vote for just anything but for something that is right, something they should do for their families and for future generations. I hope I am right in my judgment. I had to read this document at length. My late husband, Derry, who was a much better parliamentarian than I will ever be, once said to me that you have to be convinced something is right before you can convince anybody else it is right. By speaking in the Seanad this evening in the presence of the Minister, I am telling my electorate and the people of Clare to vote "yes" on 18 June, that I am doing the right thing by them and for the generations to come.
I welcome the Taoiseach who paid us a visit this morning. The Minister is a familiar face here but when he was elected Taoiseach, he promised he would visit. I raised this matter here on a couple of occasions because it looked as if he was shying away from us. However, he came this morning on this very important debate. It was good to see him here and I hope he will come back for a more leisurely visit.
I suppose if I were to have a chat later with Senator Honan she might guide me to the area where, in all the reading she has done, she was fully convinced that the people would be doing the right thing on 18 June by voting for the Maastricht Treaty. I have done an indepth study of it since it was first signed. It was extremely difficult to get any information before the Treaty was signed — and since it was signed it is extremely difficult to get simple explanatory documents. I left a lady home to Kildare recently and she asked me to explain what Maastricht was all about. The first shock she got was when I told her that Maastricht was a town. There are many thousands of people who do not realise that Maastricht is the town in which the Treaty was signed.
I do not know how we are going to get the information across to people to assist them to make up their minds. I believe that if we were to have the referendum within the next week there would be a very low poll. This is the poorest effort I have ever seen on the part of any government to get across an important matter to the electorate. It is fair to say that the Government have been rushed into the referendum on Maastricht and the Taoiseach and Government announcing the date of 18 June were unnecessarily rushing this very important question. The Government have spent more time over the past 18 months resolving problems within the Government and within the Government parties than they have in dealing with this very important matter of Maastricht or indeed many other important matters. It would appear that until the problems they had to deal with internally were resolved — as we all hope they are for the sake of the country because when there are problems like that the place for any political party is in Opposition — there was no attempt to bring Maastricht to the attention of the electorate. I hope no further problems arise between now and 18 June and that attention will be given by public representatives of every party to this issue.
I am somewhat disappointed that this House is being denied the opportunity of a full debate on the Maastricht Treaty. I have seen a list of speakers which would take the debate well into Saturday if we were to continue to sit until 8 o'clock tonight and tomorrow, and for another day. I know there are Senators who have not put their names down simply because the list is so long. Perhaps the restriction of half an hour would cause some Senators to complain, as they did this morning. They would get over that if they were given sufficient time to debate this issue and if each Senator who wished to contribute to the debate was given the opportunity. It now appears many Senators will not be given the opportunity of contributing here in this debate today and tomorrow.
Not only has it been difficult to get across the message of Maastricht to the electorate but there ha been a divergence of views, particularly from Government Ministers. We had the Taoiseach saying at one point that if we reject the Treaty — indeed, he said it here this morning but not in the same words — the strong likelihood is that our partners would go ahead with the union without us. That is fair enough, if it is true. I believe the Taoiseach should say it if it is true, although many people took it as a threat because of the time and manner in which it was said. We had his Minister for Foreign Affairs, within hours of him making that statement, saying in the Dáil that if Ireland or any other member state should decide not to ratify, the Treaty will not come into effect for any State. Could statements be more contradictory? It was totally irresponsible to make such statements; yet, we are still getting such statements.
There are members of the Government who do not know whether 11 states will go ahead without us if we reject this Treaty. Some will tell you they cannot go ahead without us and others will say the opposite. Will the Government please sit down and decide on what is the situation? How can they hope to convince any electorate to vote in any particular way if we cannot get a Government with a unified voice? At one stage we had the statement — although I believe the Taoiseach has now slightly altered his remarks — that if we vote for the Treaty, we will get £6 billion. This was the line for more than a day. For two or three days one statement after another said this £6 billion was available to this country if we passed the Maastricht Treaty. It was as if our life depended on a hand-out from Europe. What a way to approach a family of nations, asking the people of Ireland to vote for money that may or may not come, without explaining to them what is in the Maastricht Treaty.
Probably the major question for me, and I am sure for other Senators, was that dealt with by Senator Hanafin. I agee with most of what Senator Hanafin said here today because it is the question the people I meet are posing to me: if Maastricht is passed what effect will it have on the abortion or anti-abortion laws we have here? I have read the literature which has come into my possession. May I say, it is not easy to get. As Members of the Oireachtas we get the information but the average person is not getting this material yet. This is what has been printed by the Irish Council of the European Movement. It is a fair analysis, perhaps, of what is in the Maastricht Treaty, but how do they deal with the one big question people are asking? In the smaller pocket pamphlet which they have issued, the question is put: is abortion a matter for the Europe Community? The answer they give — it is a question and answer pamphlet — is "no; abortion is not, it never has been a policy area of the European Community." It goes on to say that the matter is a matter for each individual state, but that is not the question people are asking. People are not asking whether abortion is a matter for the European Community. This is the situation we find ourselves in here today. It is a matter for Irish citizens.
If we refer back to the famous decision of SPUC v. Grogan and others, we will find that abortion is referred to as a service. We are told that the Maastricht Treaty is about services to be available in every country. To allay the fears of some — indeed, they are on both sides of the divide here — the Taoiseach has promised a further referendum on the right to travel and information. On one occasion he said "and other matters relating to the court decision". However, he has not said there will be a referendum on abortion. That is the question the people want answered. I believe the vast majority of Irish people do not want to see Irish babies killed. That is their big query today. It is their fear that should the Maastricht Treaty be passed this service, as it is referred to across Europe, must be provided here. I believe there is little the Government can do to prevent it. Having rejected abortion here in 1983 how can the Irish electorate be asked to vote for the Maastricht Treaty if that is the situation?
The puzzling part of it to many people is that few Members of the Oireachtas or public representatives seem to want to talk about it. The Taoiseach has even announced he is not going to talk about it anymore. I do not think that is good enough. Whether it is in the Maastricht Treaty or not, it is in people's minds and, therefore, the Taoiseach will have to talk about it. The Government will have to deal with the issue before polling day because very many people will vote against the Maastricht Treaty due to that great fear. The Taoiseach, in an effort to allay the fears of others this morning tried to assure the House that defence and security matters had nothing to do with the Maastricht Treaty. We must reflect on his words regarding other people's fears. He was urging people to vote for the Treaty because, as he almost put it, there is no other course. He said they must vote for this Treaty because there is no other course for Ireland, we would be out on a limb and sunk in the middle of the Atlantic if the Treaty was not accepted. He wants to allay the fears of those who feel that we would lose our neutrality.
The Taoiseach assured the House that this matter would not be dealt with until 1996, but in 1996 we will be told we have no alternative and that this is how we must vote or we will be out on a limb, sunk in the middle of the Atlantic, if we do not vote to end our neutrality. I am not saying that that will be a bad thing, but pointing out the contradictions in the Taoiseach's speech this morning. Many people I spoke to told me they are voting ‘no' because they do not know. Others said they do not feel like voting.
There is a great fear that if we vote for the Maastricht Treaty we are voting for something which has not yet been explained to us and I am not prepared to take the chance. I am not so sure it would be a bad thing if the Maastricht Treaty was rejected. I have studied it — perhaps not in as great detail as Senator Honan — and I know a fair deal about it. It might be a good thing if the Maastricht Treaty was rejected either by us, the Danes or some other member state. It is a safety valve which most of Europe does not have that this matter is being referred to the people in Ireland and in Denmark. It is a great pity that more European states did not have the policy of putting these matters to the general public. Like the issue of abortion, wherever abortion is dealt with by legislation, there is abortion.
The Irish people are not prepared to trust us in this House to deal with the very sensitive and serious problem of abortion. They feel that most public representatives would favour abortion in one form or another, perhaps limited, they say, at the beginning. That is the thin end of the wedge. Limited or otherwise, abortion to most Irish people is the killing of future Irish citizens. Nobody wants to see it here. The vast majority of Irish people do not want to see abortion here and are not prepared to risk voting for the Maastricht Treaty lest the legislators here can do little about it once it is accepted. Under the Maastricht Treaty we are entitled to the services of the other states. As long as abortion is regarded as a service, I am afraid there is little this country can do to prevent it.
The whole affair since the Maastricht Treaty was first mentioned or signalled has been absolutely deplorable on the part of the Government. First, they should have studied the matter and at least had one voice coming from Government. The people are now confused to the extent that many of them will not bother voting. Many of them, if not a majority, may well vote against the Treaty.
After listening to Senator McMahon, I am now confused. I thought Senator McMahon, being the sensible Senator he is, would certainly be speaking in favour of the Maastricht Treaty. I am confused because I do not know whether he is with us or against us at this stage. However, I am hoping by the time I, and others, have finished speaking that we will have convinced him that the right thing to do on 18 June will be to vote for the Maastricht Treaty.
There has been much said, both inside and outside this House — and in correspondence of all kinds — about the confusion about this Treaty. People are taking for granted the intelligence of the Irish people, because they know far more than we give them credit for. I attended last Monday night a meeting of our party out in the heart of the country. This was one of the issues that was on the agenda. I must say that among the audience, generally small farmers, there was an excellent grasp of what the Maastricht Treaty was all about. There was a very good discussion about it, what it would mean for them and what it would mean for the country. It is up to us, as public representatives, to go to such meetings to discuss those matters people are not at all as confused as we might think.
There is an obligation on those who advocate a "no" vote on this occasion to tell us, and the people of the country, what is going to happen if this Treaty is not accepted. What are the consequences for this country? Where will the money from the Structural Funds, the Cohesion Fund and the Social Fund go if we do not accept this Treaty? It is not enough to criticise the Government, the farmers, the ICMSA, and the trade unions, and say they are not telling us the facts. We are telling the facts. We are telling it as it is. Those advocating a "no" vote should spell out the consequences for the country of a rejection of the Treaty. The consequences would be horrific. When I see countries like Finland, Sweden, Austria and perhaps a few more of the eastern countries, advocating and encouraging their people to join in the new Europe that is sufficient proof for me that we are doing the right thing. I am not worried about neutrality, security, or defence policies. We will have another referendum on that issue. The question at present is the Maastricht Treaty. When I see countries which are on the mainland of Europe wanting to join I am satisfied that we are on the right course.
Last week I attended a meeting of the European Affairs Committees in Lisbon I heard the delegates and public representatives from all those countries giving their views on what was happening and what should happen. The representatives from Federal Germany said they were cautious about it. They were afraid they might not be able to meet the cost. That is understandable, too, because they are the big paymasters in Europe. It is to them we look for all those millions that we hope to get under the various funds. It is only natural that they would be apprehensive, and they were. Last week they had industrial strife in their own country, with workers looking for higher wages. There is a danger that inflation might increase and this is something new to the Germans. The reunification of Germany has cost them a great deal of money and will continue to do so over the next number of years. They have every reason to be apprehensive about it. I still think, at the end of the day, that they will pay their fair share, as they are expected to do. I hope that this Treaty will be adopted on 18 June and that the people who are now against its adoption will be convinced before 18 June that it is right to vote for it.
The Maastricht Treaty builds on previous Treaties in defining the areas of competence of the European Community and in providing the legal basis for its future work. It charts an ambitious programme for achieving economic and monetary union, separate pillars for a common foreign and security policy and for co-operation in justice and home affairs. All three are within the single institutional framework of European Union. Economic and monetary union is one of the most significant steps in the Community's history. It is a logical extension of the completion next year of a single market for goods, services, capital and persons. European Monetary Union with a single currency is scheduled for introduction on 1 January 1999. This Treaty provides for the creation of a European system of central banks, comprising a European Central Bank and the Central Banks of the member states. A single currency will help Ireland's industries and services by reducing the transaction costs for business, as well as removing the frustrations of currency transactions which people travelling throughout Europe endure at present because of the different currencies operating in member states.
The Treaty will also mean a stronger EC commitment than ever before to accelerating the development of less well off regions such as Ireland. Existing supports benefiting Ireland will be increased and new ones added. It has always been a major Irish aim, shared by our partners, to close the prosperity gap between the different regions within the European Community.
Under the Single European Act the Structural Funds were doubled. At that time, too, the very same people who are against this Treaty were telling us that the money that was promised from those Structural Funds would not be available. They are now putting up the same argument. As far as I am aware, the £3 billion that was promised that time has been delivered in full, and we all have benefited by that. Tourism, vocational training, the roads network and ports have benefited from this fund. The £3 billion that was promised at that time was delivered. We have proof of that. The Maastricht Treaty will increase this support and widen its scope. To strengthen the EC's commitment to closing the prosperity gap, two new and very important requirements are built into this Treaty. The first one is that it will now be a binding Treaty requirement that the objective of closing the gap must be taken into account when all EC policies are being drawn up and acted upon. Secondly, from now on the EC Commission must report regularly on progress on closing the gap, and make any follow-up proposals to ensure the objectives are realised. The follow-up measures could include entirely new supports, which is very important. It is written into this Treaty that it will be monitored as it goes along. The EC will have an opportunity of checking to see that that gap between the rich and poor is being closed.
The Maastricht Treaty not only strengthens the EC's commitment to closing the prosperity gap, but it also lays down practical measures to achieve it. These include the new Cohesion Fund. This fund will be extra to all the Structural Funds and will be set up next year. It will be restricted to the less well-off countries. Ireland is one of them along with Greece, Portugal and Spain. This fund will support the upgrading of transport links in trans-European networks. This is of vital interest to Ireland because of our position on the edge of the EC, and very remote from markets at present. The Cohesion Fund will also help countries to meet the cost of implementing EC environmental legislation.
The Treaty also includes a commitment to evaluate how the existing Structutral Funds are working. This will include a review of the size of these funds and how much of the funds need to be spent to meet the commitment to close this prosperity gap. Greater flexibility will extend Structural Funds to some areas excluded up to now, including new education schemes. For countries like Ireland there will be less pressure to put up matching funds before qualifying for support. This will allow us make the fullest use of the Structural Funds, while still respecting our need to control public spending. The EC Commission has already produced budget proposals for the first five years under Maastricht. These envisage a very substantial increase in support to four countries, including Ireland, most affected by the prosperity gap.
Cuireadh an díospóireacht ar athló.
Debate adjourned.
When is it proposed to sit again?
Tomorrow at 10.30 a.m.