Before we all lose the run of ourselves in our rush to confer honorary European sainthood on Bertie Ahern, we should pause a moment to examine his Government's truly shocking record of directly flouting EU law, writes Mary Raftery.
Ireland is one of the basket cases of Europe with regard to compliance with EU directives. No amount of plaudits for Ireland's tenure of the presidency can hide the fact that this State has a long record of treating European law with a disgraceful level of contempt.
And, while we lag behind most other EU states in a range of areas, one of Ireland's worst records relates to the environment. Last month, a damning report was published which analysed Ireland's non-compliance with EU environmental directives. Compiled by environmental consultant Shirley Clerkin and commissioned by the Green Party, it inexplicably received almost no publicity.
The report found that, for its size, Ireland's record of flouting environmental directives is the worst in the EU. Only Spain has had more cases taken against it. The European Commission is prosecuting Ireland over a staggering 118 instances of breaches of environmental law. A further 85 complaints are being assessed.
Most of these cases involve basic public safety, with the largest number relating to waste, water safety, impact assessment, and protection of nature. A number regularly ends up in the European Court of Justice, with judgments (and costs) invariably given against the Government - in itself surely a national disgrace that the Government continues to fight the EU in court, at enormous expense to the taxpayer, and with no chance of success.
Perhaps Ireland's worst abuse of the law so far concerns the EU nitrates directive, involving agricultural pollution of drinking water. It is, however, only one among several cases where we may face fines of up to €20,000 per day.
It is startling to note that the vast bulk of Ireland's infringements date from around the time Bertie Ahern became Taoiseach. Prior to 1998, there were only 16 formal EU complaints issued to Ireland over environmental non-compliance. During Bertie's watch, this has increased over six-fold.
Take, for instance, what are called "bad application" cases, where EU law is not being applied. Ireland had in absolute terms the worst record in Europe during 1998, 2000, and 2002. We also top Europe on infringements of waste directives, and come a close second to Spain for breaches of water regulations.
Most shocking of all is that in a significant number of cases Ireland did not even bother to respond to the Commission's "letter of formal notice", the mechanism used to notify member-states of breaches of EU law. Under the various EU treaties, one of a member-state's most basic duties is that of co-operation with the Commission in the course of carrying out its mandated functions.
One of these functions is to implement the democratically passed laws of the EU. By ignoring so many of the Commission's letters of formal notice, Ireland has clearly failed in its duty of co-operation. And yet the country appeared united in the view that our Taoiseach was a suitable candidate for the job of president of the very body his Government has repeatedly treated with such contempt.
Shirley Clerkin's report is all the more valuable as the EU has no central register of complaints against member-states' records of non-compliance with directives. Her findings were painstakingly compiled from a myriad sources, and relied heavily on information culled from deliberations within the European Parliament, mainly from the Green Party's two Irish MEPs, Patricia McKenna and Nuala Ahern.
With the loss of the Green Party's seats, Ireland no longer has a voice dedicated to the pursuit of environmental issues at the European Parliament. Given our abysmal record on implementation of EU law in this area, this can only be judged as a severe loss.
Looking at the voting record of our MEPs generally on environmental issues, the future does not look good. Rejecting 60 per cent of measures designed to protect the environment, Ireland came third from the bottom in an EU Vote Watch survey conducted recently across a range of key votes in the Parliament.
While the Irish Green and Labour parties' representatives were highly supportive of such measures, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil MEPs were overwhelmingly negative. Overall, their respective political groupings in the Parliament (the European People's Party, and the Union for Europe of the Nations Group) voted against increased protection for the environment in almost four out of five cases.
When it suited the Government two years ago during the Nice Treaty referendum, Environment Minister Martin Cullen was full of praise for the "driving force" of EU environment directives. "If you're for the environment, you must be for Europe," he proclaimed. Needless to say, no mention was made of Ireland's shameful record of simply ignoring those bits of the law which the Government doesn't choose to obey.