Three Fianna Fail Ministers made the party's final appeal for a Yes vote in the Amsterdam Treaty referendum yesterday, praising the EU's effect on social and agricultural policy and rejecting claims that it affected neutrality.
The director of the party's campaign, the Minister for Education. Mr Martin, said Fianna Fail's message was: "Europe is working for Ireland and Amsterdam will make sure that it works better in the things it does well."
He told a Dublin press conference, attended by the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, and Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, Mr Ahern, that his party's campaign "has been by some way the most committed campaign of the political parties on Amsterdam".
Mr Martin dismissed the No campaigners as "political flatearthers who cling on to their long discredited Europhobia . . . a very disparate bunch, united only by their willingness to use almost any argument to deflect the Irish people from their attachment to Europe".
Accusing them of making "ludicrous" claims about Irish neutrality, Mr Martin said the treaty actually represented a setback for those who wanted closer European military integration.
"The treaty explicitly protects our right to decide on the future of our neutrality and it is backed by the other three neutral countries," he said. The "misrepresentations on neutrality" were the same ones used six years ago during the Maastricht referendum.
"We were told then that Maastricht represented the end of our neutrality.
"Europe's opponents have been wrong on every substantive point they have made during every referendum. They were wrong then and they are wrong now."
He said the treaty would make EU institutions more accountable and more focused on the concerns of the people of Europe. It put human rights at the heart of EU law; promoted co-operation to combat international crime and drug trafficking; made the protection of the environment and consumer and public health a mandatory priority in all European legislation; ensured that policies to tackle unemployment and social exclusion will be central to EU policy co-operation; and allowed the Union take a more active role in promoting equality.
Mr Walsh called for a strong endorsement of the treaty from the farming community and those engaged in the food industry. He said EU membership had transformed the Irish countryside over the last 25 years by providing access to a vastly enlarged market place.
"As a result we now have a modern farming sector which corresponds with the best in Europe. At the same time our food industry has made a giant leap forward with a number of key Irish players now on the world stage." The Common Agricultural Policy had, in general, provided a very favourable framework for the development of agriculture in Ireland. While many aspects of the latest farm proposals were unacceptable to Ireland, they still had to be finally negotiated, he said.
Mr Ahern said Ireland must be in the vanguard of European integration in creating a "social Europe based on an inclusive society where all citizens can participate fully in social and economic life . . . We do not want a Europe which is simply a common market and which does not protect the rights of its citizens."