This is the full text of Taoiseach Brian Cowen's speech to his party's Youth Rally for Yes Vote, National College of Ireland, Sunday, June 8th.
For Ireland the EU means opportunity
On Thursday the people of Ireland face a deeply important choice about the future of this country. Will we move forward as positive members of the European Union or will we take a new and far more uncertain route? For the generation which will shape
Ireland in the decades ahead, there is unlikely to be another vote as important as this one.
Today I want to appeal to you and the young people of this nation to step back from the daily back and forth of the debate and look at the bigger picture. Look at what the European Union means for us not just in terms of where we have come from, but also the principles which it embodies and will shape the country we will be in the years ahead.
I start with a core belief that, for Ireland, the European Union represents the greatest enabler of our sovereignty, the promoter of our interests and the protector of our identity. If we want a future of opportunity, we must be true to the EU and help it to move forward, not back.
For a generation which only knows how Ireland is today, it is important to look at and reflect on how far Ireland has come in the last three decades, and how much our full participation in, and partnership with, the European Union has contributed to the progress which now defines your lives and the challenges that lie ahead.
Talk to anyone who experienced it about life in Ireland in the 50s and 60s, before we secured our place at the European table. Ask about life in the 70s and 80s, before the full benefits of EU funding, access to the internal market and participation in the euro were available to us.
Ask them what it was like to have to leave these shores, or to wave goodbye to loved ones who were doing so, as they headed on one-way tickets to Britain, the United States and elsewhere in the search of a livelihood that the land of their birth could not offer to them.
Young people like you are a widely travelled generation. You travel by choice and not by force of circumstance. Many of you will work elsewhere and have jobs commensurate with your talents and abilities and academic achievement. I would ask you to reflect for a moment on those many generations since the foundation of the State who had to leave our shores to build a life somewhere else, with not a whole lot in their pockets, but a lot in their hearts.
The best tribute we can pay to all those emigrants who kept contact with their family, their homeland, and sustained their love of this country throughout the generations, is to build the prosperous and peaceful Ireland that they aspired to.
This is the most blessed generation in Irish history. You have grown up in an Ireland that has overcome the difficulties of forced emigration, under employment and under achievement. This State has finally developed, and we as a nation have finally accomplished, economic success. And with that success, we have gone forward, placed our public finances on a sustainable basis, opened up our economy, doubled the number of jobs, and listened and learned from others to create a receptive climate for business that is deemed successful by the leading companies not only in Ireland, but across Europe and throughout the globe.
They come here and they stay here not only for our favourable taxation regime, but because of the talent and ingenuity of our people, particularly young people like you. This is a confident, outward looking and progressive European nation and I really believe we have yet to see the best of what Ireland can be.
We can make further strides because today we live in a totally different world from the one in which I grew up. When I was in my teens I thought I would live out my life in a bi-polar world, a world where dominant super powers — the US and the Soviet Union — would be the political reality with which we would conduct not only our international but also our domestic affairs. That changed.
We in this country, perhaps, take for granted the fact that there is now a generation of your age, and my age, who have emerged from imperial totalitarianism elsewhere. They lived in countries where there wasn’t freedom of expression, where you couldn’t freely state your views in church or in the street, and where there was a totalitarian communist elite who denied people the right to follow their democratic instincts.
But for 50 years that was their reality. That reality changed, and at the heart of that change was the European Union, and the progressive forces in those countries. There were people committed to free markets and freedom itself, and the rule of law and individual rights, things that we take for granted here today. Those people saw the European Union as a path to progress and a route out of the imprisonment of the ideology that was forced on them for decades.
We should never forget the effort, the commitment and leadership shown by the EU from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 right up to 2004, when following the successful completion of enlargement during Ireland’s EU Presidency, we welcomed 10 new member States in a ceremony held in the Phoenix Park. We remember with pride that day when those people finally met their political destiny and reunited with Europe after having lived behind an iron curtain for decades.
From our own history, we should empathise today with those member states in the European Union who were denied their freedom in our lifetime. We are privileged to have had a generation before us who secured our freedom, who made the ultimate sacrifice, who stood up for liberty and self-determination. That generation before us insisted on the dignity of the individual, and those democratic values that are fundamental to how we know our lives to be lived today.
Those same egalitarian ideals are fundamental not just to us but to the young people growing up today in those countries that for so long suffered under the tyranny of communism. The European Union has lifted their horizons and it will be central to
dismantling the invisible wall of lingering racial intolerance and economic disparities which still cast a shadow on our continent. This is in keeping with the founding principles of the EU which has its roots in promoting harmony and preventing conflict.
The European Union has enabled this continent to enjoy the fruits of the longest period of peace it has ever known. This bulwark of peace and prosperity stands to be further consolidated through the Lisbon Treaty which reinforces the role of the EU in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.
In casting our votes on Thursday, I appeal to people to reflect on the fact that the progress Ireland has made would not have been possible without us being positive members of the European Union. In 1973 this was a divided island joining a divided Europe. It is no accident of history that the best progress we have made towards uniting in peace and reconciliation, all the people who share this island, has occurred since we fully embraced the concept of working in partnership and co-operation with all our European neighbours.
We are the first generation on this island to enjoy both economic prosperity and peaceful freedom. The end of emigration and of mass unemployment have been two of the most positive developments from our interaction with Europe. Alongside the Good Friday Agreement, they have transformed not just the economy but the whole history and pattern of our national life.
Socially and politically, our vision has broadened, recasting great historic issues in a wider context. In particular, the relationship between Ireland and Britain has matured and progressed through our common membership of the European Union. And, of course, the EU has made an enormous contribution to peace and justice on this island. That support has been both political and financial, assisting economic development, North and South, and especially in the Border Regions.
As we chart the future of a new Ireland at peace, we need to recognise what will be asked of us in the coming years. From a position of enormous strength, we must aspire to build on our achievements and fulfil the great potential that this island possesses. The roots of prosperity have grown deeper in our society and this has brought a level of economic activity that many of us thought would never happen. We must cultivate these deep roots of prosperity and tackle disadvantage and poverty wherever it raises its head. And that is why passage of the Lisbon Treaty is so important to our jobs, growth and Ireland’s future.
In order for Ireland to remain at Europe’s heart and protect our hard won gains at a time of world economic uncertainty, we must pass this Treaty. That is why the leadership of all the major political parties, all of the leading organisations representing business and industry, large and small, all of the agriculture and farming bodies, and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions have all put the interests of Ireland first and come together to support the Lisbon Treaty’s passage.
There is so much good that will come from voting “Yes“:
- It will help to secure Ireland’s position as a centre for foreign investment and job creation, while retaining out tax veto;
- It allows the EU to work on critical international issues like protecting the environment, tackling climate change and ensuring the security of vital energy supplies in the years ahead;
- It provides strong protection for our tradition of neutrality, and strengthens the role of our national parliament in vetting EU legislation;
- It gives legal effect to the Charter of Rights, guaranteeing fundamental rights on non-discrimination, equality and the prohibition of torture, while introducing a Citizen’s Initiative through which the people of Europe can have a more direct say in the EU decision making process;
- It enhances the capacity of police forces across Europe to work together against cross border crime;
- And despite what opponents may claim, it gives Ireland and small countries full equality in the European Commission. Those who distort the facts and talk of a loss in Irish influence ignore the undeniable reality that Germany with a population roughly eighteen times the size of ours will have exactly the same rights of representation as us on the Commission.
I ask everyone here to remember that when we vote on Thursday, our future progress is on the scales. The road we choose will not only determine the shape of our economy, but define our role in the wider world and our destiny for years to come. It is that fundamental.
A resounding Yes vote will be an important statement by the Irish people of our commitment to the EU and our European neighbours. It will underline our willingness and enthusiasm for them to have the same prospects and possibilities that we have seen in our lives. It is my deep conviction that a Yes Vote will also enhance our prospects as this Treaty deals effectively with the major issues that will confront our country into the future including energy, globalisation, global warming and migration.
I believe Ireland’s future success will flow from re-affirming our commitment to the European Union. And in an ever more competitive global environment, it is imperative we don’t give the impression that we are turning our back on Europe and the policies that have served us so well. It is an irrefutable fact that every time Ireland has voted to support the development of the EU, our country has benefited. Five times previously, we have voted Yes to Europe and on each occasion employment and trade have grown significantly. Voting Yes to Lisbon will underline our place at the heart of Europe and demonstrate to foreign investors that investing in Ireland remains a sound proposition.
There are at this time, unfortunately, voices in Ireland who have a narrow vision and isolated view of where we stand in the world. It is up to all of us in positions of political leadership to articulate why we must move beyond their outdated and insular ideology.
I often think that leadership is about appealing to our best traditions of community and solidarity and our own sense of generosity as a people. For years, Ireland saw, not through choice but through force of circumstance, so many of its young people go to other parts of the world to make a living and rear a family and try to maintain the values of family and community that we cherish. Those values are so much a part of what we are, and are as relevant today in times of prosperity as they were in times of adversity. They are the values of hard work, of personal responsibility, of not relying on the State to do what you can do for yourself.
We are coming to understand too that, with material wealth and choice does not necessarily come fulfilment and happiness. Because society is not just about the “me” generation and about ourselves. We have an obligation to those who have gone before us and sacrificed so much for our national progress to conduct ourselves as citizens, not just as consumers. This means an extension of community beyond ourselves and being part of a vibrant and inclusive society. It’s about empowering the people of this country to be what they can be, to fulfil our potential, so that each and every Irish person can live out their lives in dignity and decency.
In conclusion, can I say it’s so important that we send a positive and determined signal not only to ourselves but to those in other countries who are looking to Ireland to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. There are people across Europe today who admire us, who see how successful we have been, who look to us as a model but, who will simply not understand why a nation that has benefited most would not pass this Treaty. They will not understand why we would renege, resile and say no to making further sensible and necessary improvements to a Union that has helped bring us to where we are today.
But I don’t believe for a moment that the people of this country will say no to Europe or no to the European Union, because we are a people who are generous, are open, are mature and tolerant and want to see the same improvements for others as we saw for ourselves.
So I make the call for a Yes vote on that basis, confident that this country will be true to itself and its national character, and vote Yes willingly and enthusiastically so that others who showed solidarity with us can have the same possibility as we had for ourselves. Because that is the essence of republicanism, the ability to offer equality of opportunity to others so that we can enjoy it ourselves.
That is why I believe you should vote “Yes” for Europe. And that is why I believe you should vote “Yes” for Ireland.