A dhaoine uaisle, ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas phearsanta agus buíochas Parlaimint na hEorpa a ghabháil don Chathaoirleach, agus dos na Seanadóirí, as ucht cuiridh a thabhairt dom teacht chun cainte inniu. Uair thábhachtach agus stairiúil atá ann don tír faoi láthair, ach is uair thar a bheith tábhachtach agus stairiúil é don Aontas Eorpach. Tá ról speisialta le himirt ag institiúidí tábhachtacha polaitíochta ar nós an tSeanaid. Dá bhrí sin, tá taitneamh mór orm go bhfuil an seans agam labhairt inniu.
It is very important not only that I thank the Seanad for its invitation, but that I recognise the important role of the Seanad in the political life of the State. Perhaps a more creative and substantial role for the Seanad could be considered, bearing in mind the evolution of Irish political accountability and Ireland's connection with European affairs. There is a clear sense, particularly through our domestic political representation as opposed to our MEPs, that many people feel a lack of ownership of the European project. We have to seek ways of grounding the European project within our domestic political institutions and I thank Senators for this opportunity to do so.
Ireland has come a long way in recent decades; it has, in a sense, emigrated from the past shared by those who left this country in years gone by and those who stayed. The first theme I want to discuss is that of going backwards. It is an option that makes no sense. Ireland's transition has brought us opportunities that were presented to earlier generations of Irishmen and Irishwomen only when they took an emigrant's boat and a job abroad. The transition to which I refer is particularly marked if we look at our economic performance. Ireland became politically independent in the 1920s and the new Government's first task was to try to establish the institutions of the new State, while asserting its space in the wider world. This task was achieved with aplomb and considerable success. While a policy of trying to build up infant industry behind protective barriers was appropriate during the great depression of the 1930s, that era eventually passed and such a policy came to be seen as wholly inappropriate to new circumstances.
It is interesting to pause for thought and to compare Ireland's development during the first and second halves of its 80 years of independence. Until the 1960s, we were politically free, but economically dependent on our neighbours. Forty years ago, 75% of Irish exports went to the United Kingdom and 90% of our agricultural produce was exported to feed UK citizens under that country's cheap food policy. Our currency was still linked with sterling but we did not have a say when decisions were being made. The policies of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Downing Street had to be adopted here, regardless of how irrelevant they may have been to us. Net emigration from this State reached one of its highest levels just over 40 years ago, leading to the establishment of the Commission on Emigration in the late 1950s. The commission examined the push and pull factors which broke the hearts of many families and the backs of many communities. The United Kingdom and Ireland shared a common labour market 40 years ago as a result of migration patterns. Words like partnership, industrial relations and public policy were not heard in that era, as we had inherited the British model of conflict between bosses and unions.
Forty years ago, Ireland was a stagnant, backward, failed region of the British economy. Although we were politically independent, we were locked in post-colonial stagnation. We were unfree and unsuccessful in economic terms. We began to change in the 1960s with a determined effort to invest in young Irish people in the form of education. Television opened our eyes to the wider world and we moved away from undue respect for authority and the old nostrums of previous generations. Our finest literature had been banned and our best authors had sought solace abroad.
I hesitate to quote James Joyce in the presence of one of the foremost Joycean scholars of the State, but prior to his death when asked about leaving Ireland, he said, "I never left". He told the truth because in his heart, mind, intellect and writing he had never left, but this isolated, insular, priest-ridden, nationalist place closed itself off from the world and finally the time came when it opened up. A large part of the opening up was due to one of the architects of the economic isolation, Lemass, who unbundled all that had gone before piece by piece to connect and move from isolation.
The big act of connection was the idea, although frustrated by De Gaulle in 1961, that Ireland, because it traded so much with Britain, would seek to connect with the European Economic Community along with Britain. That vision was carried forward by Lemass, Whitaker, Lynch, Hillery and Garret FitzGerald, people who brought real political vision and leadership to move the State from isolation to connection, from being closed to being open, from a pervasive sense of failure to a new spring in its step. The connection with the European Union was made part of the driving force, the traction and pulling mechanism, to lift us from isolation to connection, from failure to opportunity.
Joining the European Economic Community was not singular in its change as it was more complex. It alone was not the only force of change, it was also indispensable as an agent of change and in its pulling power to bring us to where we are today. It is my contention that the most creative act of sovereign independence exercised by the people politically in the 20th century was to add real value to our small State's influence by choosing to connect to the great project of European integration and the family of democratic nations which constitute today's Europe of values. Joining the EEC in a certain way, economically at least, was Ireland's second declaration of independence in the 20th century. We have understood from this one core thing about us as a people on an island: intelligent interdependence serves us well. It has replaced isolationism as the leit motif of public policy that has led to change and success. Happily, the people when called upon in the 1970s and subsequently in other referenda to ignore this connection and continue with a deep frozen sense of 19th century style sovereignty isolated and in some sense purist but in fact stale and unsuccessful did not do so. We ignored those silent voices previously because they were wrong and we should ignore them again.
Europe brought us new ways, thinking and methods to approach public policy, which have become deeply embedded in how we manage our State's affairs, for example, in regard to gender equality and consumer protection. Ireland did not have an office of director of consumer affairs until it joined the EEC. Prior to that, consumer protection was dealt with under the Sale of Goods Act, 1898. With regard to environmental protection, many in Ireland have green and environmental values in regard to sustainability and inter-generational equity as they believe our inheritance from the abundance of nature's table should carry on to other generations. We have done better in Ireland by virtue of being in Europe in this area than we would have done alone.
Rules on state aids sometimes lead to tough politics because one learns to say "No," but a good rule, because it tries to make us leaner in a competitive environment, means we are better able to cope. Our involvement in the European Union has led to air transport and telecommunications liberalisation, indispensable cogs in the wheel of a modern economy of an island community, 90% of whose income is earned through trade.
The national development plans have led to dramatic improvements in planning, monitoring and evaluation skills in Ireland's formidable public service as an entirely new capacity has been developed in terms of public policy management and control. Membership of the European Union has also resulted in new standards in our approach to regulation with the establishment, for example, of the Employment Equality Agency, Competition Authority, Environmental Protection Agency and Health and Safety Authority. All these agencies matter to people and flow from the framework legislation of Ireland's European engagement.
Confrontation has been replaced by partnership in the relationship between Ireland's employers, unions and wider civil society. It is an Irish model but was inspired by a European method. Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of European integration, stated: "When you change the context, you change the problem". I believe that in the context of having a presence in the corridors of power of the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers our small State has learned to think of itself in terms of equivalence with the other states of the European Union. The old ghosts and atavism in our nationalism and feelings about Britain have matured and changed.
That easy sense of equivalence was part of the contextual change that allowed for a better relationship between Taoisigh and British Prime Ministers in the forging of the peace process in Northern Ireland. I will not digress except to express my own hope as we see its institutions under considerable stress that at the heart of the process non-violence matters and democracy are the only way for the core to survive however the process is buffeted now and in the weeks and months to come.
I could not have been the leader of a group in the European Parliament without the full and active support of my British colleagues. The Liberal Democrats were the largest component in our group under the European Parliament's system and had the right to call the prospect of the Parliament's presidency for themselves, but they were prepared to share that with an Irishman. I could not be President of the European Parliament if, among others, colleagues from the United Kingdom had not voted for me. I make the point because it is a different thing, a change of context, a change of opportunity.
While we moved on in the way I described, we still held on to attributes of our old psychology. We still had our old post-colonial dependency on Britain similar to our trade days in the 1960s. We too easily replaced it with a new psychological dependency, the crutch of European Structural and Cohesion Funds. It was the quick fix that generations of politicians used to sell Europe to the population and like all quick fixes eventually was stripped bare and exposed. Perhaps, curiously, between last year and this there may have been a delayed reaction and we are now having a European debate in Ireland. That is good and I welcome that fact.
The quick fix was to vote for £X billion and we would be all right on the night, bit we did not examine the text, subtext or context which together created the sense of that with which we were engaging. I am pleased we are having this debate, even if it has been delayed. Curiously, we are having it on the most puny and modest of the treaties on which we have been asked to give an account. It is the least of all the treaties by a large margin because it is about housekeeping arrangements. For example, it is similar to putting to the people how to run the Seanad and the rules of procedure. It is no wonder people are confused because they suppose that politicians can run institutions themselves and wonder why they should be bothered with it. This debate is long overdue in those terms and, happily, we are moving from the quick fix sale of funds.
Ireland has been the beneficiary of extraordinary European solidarity. Agricultural and Structural and Cohesion funding has been worth more than €70 billion since Ireland joined the European Union 30 years ago. Such funding has been the result of an extraordinary act of solidarity, freely given by our European partners, because Ireland was more agriculturally dependent and poorer than the average member state. It was not because we were Irish, but because the criteria and budget structure were in place.
The economic analysis for Ireland carried out by the funds does not explain modern Irish growth. Real national income in GNP terms doubled in the last decade and Structural Funds accounted for a very small part of that, perhaps a tenth. How we took off, subject to getting the conditions right, cannot be explained by structural funding. Part of the explanation, however, is the muscular effect of the market access that Ireland has in Europe. When we joined the EEC in 1973 our world-wide exports were worth €5 billion. Last year our world-wide exports were worth €82.5 billion. Subject to our remaining competitive, this is bread and butter we can continue to eat at Irish tables. These figures are not dependent on negotiated Structural Funds but on muscular economics and will continue to increase if we remain competitive.
Much of our growth came from the extraordinary flow of foreign direct investment, especially from the United States. We should be in no doubt, however, that while many preconditions are in place, such as speaking English, an educated labour force and a friendly tax environment, people still need to sell. Market access for a population of 4 million was not the platform that attracted 25% of all US foreign direct investment to the EU in 2000. Access to EU and other markets is a key part of that attraction. Our singular dependency on the UK is gone; it now takes just over a fifth of our total exports. It is still our major customer but things have changed. We must avoid replacing the old psychology of failure, emigration and stagnation with a new psychology intoxicated by the success of the last decade where, as on the soccer fields abroad, we might think that they will never beat the Irish and that the Irish can walk alone. Let us have no nostalgia for standing alone because it does not work.
I am aware of the attacks on respected and experienced voices in Ireland like Seán Dorgan, the chief executive of the IDA, in the course of the debate on the Nice treaty. People say he should not speak on this issue. For my part, I am glad people in civil society are speaking. I am glad ICTU, under the leadership of a Member of Seanad Éireann, is active and willing to engage, as are the chambers of commerce. People who are not members of any political party are working day in and day out both for and against the treaty. Why, then, am I pleased that Seán Dorgan is speaking? His is a voice of some experience. Walking down Grafton Street, there are signs in shop windows advertising vacancies and frequently they ask for experience, even for the simplest of jobs. Who should be believed when trying to make a rational assessment about Ireland's economic prospects and future foreign direct investment – Seán Dorgan, with all that he knows, or Justin Barrett, with all that he does not?
We are told that we will be flooded with immigrants. This is a lie. The level of migration to this country since Europe lost its Iron Curtain and people are free to travel has been negligible. The Irish know a lot about freedom to travel. There are more Irish illegals in Boston today than the sum of all the refugees and asylum seekers in this State. How did they get there? They had a passport and were therefore free to travel, but they did not have the right to work. In terms of the right to travel versus the right to work, the Irish know that if one can move and is determined, one will do it and take one's chances upon arrival. Having rid themselves of communist oppression and equipped themselves with a passport in a visa free environment a decade ago, how come they are not already here? The answer is because they do not want to be here. The argument to the contrary is a lie.
That argument would have us believe that they are all coming here because there are no jobs at home. At the same time there is a different argument used by the "No" campaign, that labour is cheaper in the applicant countries so all new jobs will be located there. They will not be coming here because all our jobs will be going there. The cheap labour argument does not stand up. It is an illiterate view of the contemporary Irish economy. People who think all those jobs were brought here because we are a cheap labour force are wrong. Also, those who think labour is cheap in Poland should go to China or elsewhere in Asia. If cheap labour is the issue we are not even in the game. We have moved up the ladder into a skills-productivity-education mix that puts us in a place that is not fighting in the cheap labour pond. If we were, we would not be where we are today in terms of what we have achieved or in terms of the ability to encourage, promote and retain jobs.
According to the "No" campaign, either jobs go to the applicant countries because of cheaper labour or there are no jobs in those countries and their citizens all come here. Neither is true and both show poor levels of analysis. I remember Anthony Coughlan's argument about centre-periphery in the 1970s, that the rich centre would suck in everything while the poor periphery supplied cheap labour. How wrong he was. Many in the rich centre would now love to be on the poor periphery in terms of performance and output. They were wrong before and thank God we ignored them. Please God we will ignore them again.
On Sunday I went to Portlaoise with a group of enthusiastic young people to campaign at the All-Ireland under-21 football final between Dublin and Galway. All politicians know we get the rough with the smooth out on the street and we got both that day. A man came up to me and told me he was voting "No" because he works in Aer Rianta. I had heard many arguments but this was a new one. I asked him to explain the logic in that argument. He told me that he was given a sheet in work stating that an article in the Nice treaty provided for the privatisation of Aer Rianta.
Article 133 of the treaty confers on the European Union authority to negotiate trade for the Union, mandated by the member states and accountable to the European Parliament, on the global stage. Article 133 is good for this State because it is the largest exporter of software in the world. The greatest threat to the software industry is piracy and we rely on our negotiating strength in the WTO to protect intellectual property, the real value of software, from piracy abroad. Having muscle in such a body provides muscle for Irish jobs. Isolation would not work for us. Someone has perverted the EU capacity to negotiate in the World Trade Organisation into a scare story.
I told that man that my father was a watchmaker who worked Aer Rianta's duty free shop in Shannon Airport. It was a good employer but when he died without a pension, it employed my mother and I paid my way through Trinity College by working there in the summers. I told that man that the company means something to me and that whoever was telling him this was wrong.
We must talk to people. We will not win this battle with photo calls in Buswell's Hotel or the Shelbourne Hotel. We must talk to people at the match, at the races and in the pub because they need simple acts of reassurance. There are a lot of hares being coursed out there today and many of them ought to be run to ground.
I hear people in the "No" campaign say there is a flexibility clause and that the "enhanced co-operation" of the treaty is eurospeak when the reality is more complicated. They say the flexibility clause will be used by the big states to gang together and jack up corporate taxation, to screw us and to make us join them. They say that, although it is against our national interest, we are stupidly, perversely and suicidally going to agree with this contract. These people speak for the large states although they do not represent them and have not in many cases been elected to represent anyone in this State. When elected, President Chirac had a policy platform to try to reduce corporate tax in France, but perhaps the "No" campaign knows more about running France than he does. Silvio Berlusconi was elected in Italy on a tax reduction platform, but perhaps the "No" campaign knows more about Italian politics than the Prime Minister of Italy.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer in the United Kingdom would not touch this taxation with a barge pole. I am going through the so-called large states, but where is the gang? Even if they did perversely change their minds and decide they wanted to do this, we have absolute authority to say "No thanks, we do not want it". Why would we want something that would damage us? The only way this flexibility clause could damage Ireland's jobs would be if our public policy makers behaved suicidally, like lemmings. We may have all sorts of arguments with each other about public policy and issues of management, corruption, control and expenditure, but we do not have arguments about strategic national stupidity and suicidal behaviour in terms of our national interest on the international stage. This flexibility stuff is bunkum. It should be treated as such and punctured.
Regarding the economy, I say to those who deal with farmers that between now and 2006 the slice of the purse given to Irish farmers will not change, with or without enlargement and with or without Nice. Senators are aware of the rí rá and ruaille buaille happening with regard to whether there will be a mid-term review of the Common Agricultural Policy and I do not know the answer. It is a negotiated system and we are not at the end, but because it is a negotiated order the things Irish farmers can give their political representatives in Europe are in their hands in the referendum on the Nice treaty. Those things are the powers of influence and goodwill and the power to raise friends or to blow friendships. They hold in their own hands the real key to their interests because this is a negotiated order and goodwill matters in such a system. It is true that new countries are perceived by many farmers as competitors for the purse, but they are also countries like us with respect for a rural life and agricultural traditions. They are allies of the future in the negotiated order in maintaining a focus on rural life and on an important and prominent role for agriculture in the European Union.
In simple terms, this treaty is about a family getting larger. Whenever a baby stops slavering in a high chair and moves to the kitchen table, everyone has to squeeze around to make room. We are being asked to squeeze around, to take a little bit less, but so is everyone else and they have all said "Yes" because this is making history. It is an unparalleled act of reconciliation. Without complicating it, it is formula for squeezing around the table to make room for others.
I hear that the big countries are out to get the small ones with regard to MEPs. From the next European election, depending on numbers, we will have one MEP for every 350,000 Irish citizens while Germany will have one MEP for every 826,000 citizens. Who is getting the better deal? Regarding the European Commission, from 2005 each member state, large or small, will get one commissioner for the first time ever. The five larger states are giving up a commissioner and for the first time large and small will be equal. Moreover, if this should change in the future – that has to be negotiated and agreed by unanimity – it can only operate on the basis of absolute equality between large and small. There is no hegemony of the large over the small, no prior right of the large over the small and no superior right of the large over the small in the treaty formula.
Regarding the weighting of votes in the Council, the reunified Germany has a population now of 81.8 million and after enlargement will have a voting weight of 8.5% at the Council table while Ireland has a population of just under 4 million and after enlargement, if we say "Yes" to the treaty, our voting weight will be just over 2%. Germany is 20 times larger by population, but just over four times bigger by weight. Does that formula represent a bad deal for the smaller state?
These large and small relativities are overdone. If we get this right, 2004 will be the year of the greatest act of reconciliation in modern Europe, an act of healing and an act of closure on a barbaric 20th century. It will be presided over in the Council of Ministers by an Irish Taoiseach, in the European Parliament by an Irish MEP and leading it in the European Commission – since it has gone from a national quota to a merit based system – will be the most senior civil servant, David O'Sullivan, an Irishman. Do not tell me that size is the only issue; it is about conviction, determination, passion, networking, friendship and relationship building. Those have been the keys and those other observations establish why that is so.
I believe in a Europe of values. I have talked much about Ireland and interests because in this treaty we are being asked to say "Yes" to something that is in our interest as well as to something that is morally right. What a wonderful conjunction in politics to suit one's pocket and to do the morally right thing at the same time. Through enlargement we are promoting pluralist democracy and sustaining it. It was to maintain pluralist democracy and to keep the flame of its values of human, individual and minority rights at the heart of affairs that, after Franco, Europe connected with Spain. After the dictator Salazar it connected with Portugal to do the same thing. We took in Greece in 1981 against what seemed the odds because the colonels had gone and we were sustaining democracy. That set of values matters very much in the newly independent states of central and eastern Europe. Europe respects cultural diversity; it is not an oppressive force and it does not represent a melting pot theory of integration. Europe would offend its own interests if it was to cease to respect the cultural plurality and the civic diversity on which it is founded through its states.
Europe shows extraordinary solidarity in global affairs with others and globally it is the leading promoter of policies on sustainability. Each of these values is consistent with our values, with the values of Bunreacht na hÉireann and with our vision in contemporary Ireland for ourselves and for Europe. I am proud that the EU and its member states form the leading global force promoting the Kyoto Protocol and the search for international solutions to climate change. I am proud that in Johannesburg, for all the high ambitions and modest achievements, Europeans beat the United States of America in convincing the Russians and the Canadians to sign up to Kyoto. These things matter in terms of quality of environment and inter-generational equity.
I am proud that the EU, its member states and its accession states have led the drive – we had a referendum here on this – to establish the International Criminal Court, which is the most significant step forward in terms of the protection and promotion of human rights that we have seen on the international stage. It is designed to get at dictators and despots, not at democrats, but there are problems with the USA which are being negotiated. This is an intrinsically proper and good thing to do.
Senators may not know it, but the European Union and its member states outspend the United States of America 2.5 to 1 every year in humanitarian aid, in nation building and on sustainability projects. If one believes in sustainability, international solidarity and the values which lie behind the International Criminal Court, how could we pervert them in the travesty of the debate which many people who say they have those values fail to espouse?
I was pleased today to hear my European parliamentary colleague, Danny Cohn-Bendit, president of the European Green Group and a man who voted for me with most of his colleagues in last year's election, saying he had asked the Irish to vote "Yes". He said he thought it was a bad treaty. However, one would be wrong if one thought he agrees with the Irish version of why it is bad. Danny Cohn-Bendit thinks it is a bad treaty because it is not federal enough. In a wonderful passionate speech yesterday he accused the Commission, which had just presented the reports on enlargement, of not dreaming. He said, "Je rêve de l'Europe”. He was talking about his dreams of Europe and spoke with passion and intensity. Gerry Collins stood up with a pin and burst the balloon with one question. He asked him to tell his friends at home that a big obstacle to the enlargement of which he dreams is the Nice treaty. He invited them to ask the Irish people to vote “Yes”. Danny Cohn-Bendit walked out of the chamber and gave an interview. He said he did not think it was the best treaty because it was not federal enough, but asked the Irish to vote “Yes”. He knows it will remove the last brick from the Berlin Wall and is the morally right thing to do.
I want to discuss something which I would not believe only I heard it here. There is a debate that Europe is about to or has already become an aggressively militarised or militarising super state. That is a mouthful of clichés which I would like to separate. My view is that the super state is an invention of The Daily Telegraph and little Englanders in the United Kingdom. The super state hypothesis is an extremity and a distortion of today's Europe. However, it is so extreme that, like all extremes, it justifies its counterpart of excessive scepticism. Each extreme needs the opposite extreme to justify its own extremity. It is an invention for super sceptics who need its counterpart of super state. It is thesis and antithesis. It does not exist. Tell me the super state in the world whose annual budget is as low as 1.12% of the GDP of its constituent member states? How could a super state exist with a budget which is, relatively speaking, so puny?
I do not understand the point about aggressive Europe. Europe was not invented to give Structural Funds to Ireland or for the Common Agricultural Policy. It has all those things. Europe's raison d'être, animation and heart and soul and the vision of Monnet, Schuman, Adenauer, de Gasperi and Spaak at the beginning were clear and simple. They were the creative act of reconciliation, burying the old balance of power Europe, setting to one side the Europe which had produced two barbaric wars in the 20th century and the beginning of a new way. It is the most successful sustained peace project our Continent has ever known. It is perverse to begin to label it as some type of post or neo-imperial aggressive super state. It is counter-intuitive and unhistorical to lay that claim against today's European Union.
I want to deal with one other point about the rapid reaction force. Whether one votes "Yes" or "No" to the Nice treaty will not change that because we voted for a rapid reaction force in an earlier treaty. The rapid reaction force is not a European army or a standing army. It is a standby commitment by member states to commit on paper one brigade of 850 troops, in our case, potentially for one year in a field of operations. The standby commitment is at the absolute discretion, if it should become actionable, of the Government and the Houses of the Oireachtas. The European Commission, Council of Ministers, European Parliament or any other external body has zero control and authority to send one Irish troop on one mission for one day. There is nothing in the treaty which alters any one of those things in the manner I have just stated.
I have noticed in some of the opinion polls I have read that many Irish women feel cautious about connecting to a "Yes" vote. I have come to the view during my canvassing – it is like the Aer Rianta matter – that I could talk to Irish women about gender equality and improvements in Europe, but that is not what is worrying them. In Tullamore last Saturday afternoon I met a grandmother, her two adult daughters and her grandchildren who were in go-carts. They asked me about conscription. Their feminine values centred around conscription rather than gender. Many women I meet are worried about conscription, war and the military super state rather than gender. There is nothing in any European treaty or the Nice treaty which gives any power to conscript any Irish citizen or the citizens of anywhere else. I can look my own children, boys and girls, in the eye at home and tell them with the absolute certainty of my conviction, reason and knowledge that I am not doing anything which will see them conscripted. I could tell that to anyone else's child also. We must give that message to people in order that it is clearly understood. It is one of the issues raised by women.
Of all the elements creatively transforming our old Continent today, none is more dramatic than the truly continental scale enlargement now at hand. This is the first time in millennia when Europe is uniting around common values, not at the point of a sword or from the barrel of a gun, but by the free will of free and sovereign peoples. What an extraordinary moment of reconciliation and history. The picture is now clear. From yesterday ten states, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Cyprus and Malta, are ready. The question is, are the 15 member states or the Irish ready? The time to bring closure to this historic moment has come.
This will dramatically enhance European stability and environmental policy. People here are worried about Chernobyl and its consequences for us. Do Members know there are similar RBMK style reactors operating today at Ignalina in Lithuania? Do Members know that by us engaging the Lithuanians in the enlargement process we have negotiated to shut those down? We are already benefiting, even if we did not know that. Security is not all about military and defence; it is also about issues such as nuclear safety and cross-border trafficking in crime. Enlargement is part of the solution to those issues, not part of the problem. We are bringing people into the same rule of law and method. For many of Europe's contemporary challenges, enlargement is part of the solution.
Economically, it is a win-win situation. When the accession states did their first Europe agreement with us in 1994, they bought €160 million worth of Irish goods. Last year as they grew, we grew with them. They bought €1.2 billion worth of Irish goods. Two years ago I visited Warsaw and Enterprise Ireland had an office growing Irish companies, not American companies, in central and eastern Europe. Do Members know that two years ago Irish foreign direct investment in Poland was worth more than €1 billion? Ireland is growing. It is a win-win situation.
There are obstacles left, such as budgets in agriculture, the hope for a comprehensive settlement in Cyprus and the complex border crossing issues between Kaliningrad, which is part of the Russian Federation, and Russia because Lithuania and Poland will surround it when they join the European Union and Russia will become separated from its hinterland.
Of all the challenges the most difficult is the Nice treaty. The others can be negotiated, whereas the Nice treaty is not negotiable as it is a constitutional, institutional order. The challenge is clear. We, in Ireland, did not ask to be faced with this choice. In an extraordinary way a confluence of events has brought us to this.
If I could pick an image to represent the choice for Ireland on the enlargement question, it would be this. Faced with a unique choice at this critical time and as the last to make this choice, will we, the people – not we, the politicians – choose to remove the last brick from the Berlin Wall or will we go back to an older Ireland which, while it can no longer work, continues to have charms and history, take the booty, climb into the round tower, pull up the ladder and close the door? There was a time when that worked, this is not it. We have that choice as a people and I believe we will choose wisely.
This time we also have the choice to put in our Constitution, an Bunreacht, the basic law, the right of the people to take ownership of the defence process in future and refuse to allow a Government to enter into a defence pact if one were to come about in the future. The people can claim that right by voting "Yes".
I refer to my earlier remark about experience. Does experience matter? Ireland's experience in Europe has been overwhelmingly positive. The experienced voices in this debate, as opposed to some of the others who argue for a "No" vote, need at least to be listened to in the light of their experience, not just in terms of the quantity of arguments. The approach by which one says, "Give me three points for and three points against or ten points for and ten points against the treaty," denatures the quality of reason itself and should not be our primary way of doing things.
I will close by quoting the prayer of the Scottish poet, Robbie Burns. I will not try to put on a Scottish accent or use the exact words of his old Scottish English style:
Would that God the gift would give us
to see ourselves as others see us.
The eyes of Europe are upon us. We now have a date, a rendezvous, with history, with an unparalleled act of European reconciliation and, uniquely, it is we, the people, who choose. As it is in our interests economically and because it is the right thing to do morally, politically and historically, I hope, with all my passion and conviction, this country that I love and which I am so proud to represent will find the generosity of spirit which I believe is ours. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.