98th PLENARY SESSION 

Thank you, Chairman.  Chairman, I would like to welcome the Taoiseach to the Forum.  As the Taoiseach knows, we are now into the last few weeks of the campaign on the Lisbon Treaty and I know that he himself very strongly encouraged his party to become involved in the activities in terms of promoting the Treaty in the final few weeks. 

But I think I suppose I would be asking him today whether he would accept that this particular Treaty campaign is conforming to a very familiar pattern which is that we find as political parties ourselves out trying to educate voters and members of the public about the European Union and we are finding that people actually know very little about the European institutions and about European Affairs generally.  It is quite a challenge to try and explain complex institutional arrangements to people and proposed changes to those institutional arrangements.  And, in effect, what we are trying to do as political parties and activists is to provide people with a crash course on European Affairs within the space of a number of weeks preceding the referendum on the Treaty. And that this is not a satisfactory state of affairs at all.  And that as political parties and I suppose I would be suggesting that in your role as Taoiseach that perhaps this is something that might be looked at.  Because if it is the case that we are to avoid similar scenarios in the future where we are trying to again almost perform the impossible; educate people in such a short period of time, it would appear that some kind of initiative on behalf of all Member States within the European Union, and the Governments of those Member States, to provide a more permanent information service about the European Union would be a very good way to proceed and that this information service would need to be a national one. 

It would need, in effect, to be as local and as accessible as possible.  And what I would like to propose to the Taoiseach here today is that perhaps we might look in this country at the idea of providing, if you like, one stop shops that provide information about the European Union and all aspects of the European Union’s functioning, including its institutions, its policies, grants and funding opportunities, the rights of citizens, how to use the EU, the parliaments, the petitions committee, the EU ombudsman and so on, information about the other Member States.  These might be located in local government offices because it seems to me the problem really is that it is a psychological one that when we start talking about Europe people lose interest because they see it as something that is completely detached and removed from their every day reality.  And, in fact, what we need to persuade people to do is to regard the European Union as another level or aspect, dimension of their political identity.  And the only way in which we can do this, I think, is to bring the information about the European Union and the way in which it functions closer to people. 

And I would suggest that members of the public do use their local authorities office, go there to access services and so on, and that this would be a very good place to locate such information offices and help us to overcome the huge information deficit that is there when European Treaty campaigns come around.  Thank you.

Reply from An Taoiseach Brian Cowen TD
And sometimes we hear criticism about Europe by people who don’t have a great affinity to participative democracy at home and then wonder why Europe isn’t so vigorous in its participative democracy abroad.  We need to recognise that our first obligation as citizens is to make Europe more relevant ‑ to make that general point that Niamh Bhreathnach and others have made ‑ to make Europe more relevant.  It is true that we have learned during this decade the need to find means by which a conversation is held in this country that not just deals with our domestic policies but has an understanding that our domestic policies are located in an international context all the time, and that it is from Europe that much progressive policy formulation has derived from in this country. 

We’ve adapted it to our national circumstances.  But you can look at the whole level of participation in this society, not just in terms of how we have been able to grow in wealth and jobs and investment, but the participation of all of our citizens.  The fact that far more people, thankfully, have jobs, including looking at the gender gap, the changing and much welcomed changed role of women in our society in positions of influence and having a role outside the home, as was the case traditionally in the past.  A lot of that development, the whole momentum towards equal pay and better working conditions, health and safety, all of these important progressive policies emanated from the European setting where countries and citizens and democracies who are committed to that broad social democratic vision have come forward with common approaches, who see that cooperation and finding a standardised way in which we can conduct our affairs and improve the employer/employee relationship and provide a greater role for what we now have devised domestically as our social partnership model; one that is looked to in other countries as a means by which we can, in fact, address what people call a democratic deficit. 

98th plenary session of the National forum on Europe • St Patrick’s Hall • Dublin Castle • Dublin 2 • Thursday 22 May 2008
Keynote Speaker: An Taoiseach, Mr Brian Cowen TD  

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European Affairs, National Forum on Europe by Deirdre