It was, by all accounts, a long way from City Hall, Limerick, to Clare on Friday night when the Forum on Europe organisers received complaints that the peripheral areas of the EU were being ignored.
Mr Brian Meaney, a Green Party candidate in Clare, asked why the forum was not meeting in his home county. To applause from the 100 people present, he said there was an implicit arrogance in Clare FM not having been made aware of the forum taking place.
Not true, said the chairman, Senator Maurice Hayes, who pointed out that 21 advertisement slots had been placed with the station.
"Exactly how do you plan running a Europe from Brussels if, in Ireland, you cannot make it to Clare?" Ms Samantha Maloney wondered.
Unfair, Senator Hayes replied. He had travelled 100 miles from the other side of Dublin. "We are making an effort to get out. I do seriously consider the possibility of extending the range of the places that we are going to." Ms Maloney added that the right of protest within Europe had been curtailed. She had been on a bus from Ireland that was stopped in Calais and again in Italy during the protests in Genoa. "It was stopped because the Schengen Agreement was suspended in those countries because there was a protest going on."
Mr Bernard O'Farrell, a member of the European Movement, was thankful that the forum was going to Galway. He said the State had got benefits from Europe and had to be generous by allowing new countries to enter the EU. "Do we want to be the one country in Europe that opposes it?"
Two Limerick people, Mr Noel O'Brien and Ms Nora Bennis claimed that had the referendum gone the other way, there would not be a forum."If every other European member had been given the opportunity to vote in the Nice Treaty, we would not be standing alone today," Ms Bennis said.
Mr O'Brien said there was a doubt about the role of politicians in relation to Europe.
"This was highlighted by one Minister campaigning one way and voting another." For Mr Edward Horgan, of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, the use of Shannon Airport by US military aircraft was an example of the State's neutrality "being thrown out the window". "We must oppose wrong where wrong is being committed. But that does not mean opposing all that is European."
Mr Fiachra O Luain, of the Shutdown Sellafield Campaign, said the EU had not protected people from the terrors of the nuclear industry, "which I see as a relic of the Cold War".
Mr Gerry O'Sullivan said the Nice Treaty had been voted on and it was again been put to the people.
"Do you think for one moment that if Germany rejected the Nice Treaty, they would be having another one? No way."
What was largely an orderly meeting erupted when Mr Gerry McMahon, from Limerick, referred to "the rag bag crowd of people. "They do not listen. They do not want to take about the Nice Treaty. They want to talk about Afghanistan."
Amid the uproar, a discreet garda was suddenly on his feet before normality was restored by Senator Hayes.
"We can have a discussion or we can have an argy-bargy," he noted.
The forum will meet in Athlone today, Donegal on Wednesday and Monaghan on Friday.
