mr president when we last debated this issue i predicted that the irish electorate would reject the political circus comprising gerry adams nigel farage and joe higgins
i am happy to say that i called it correctly
the nigel farage bombast it has to be said did add to the gaiety of the irish nation for a while but of course the contempt that he holds for irish democracy oozed from every pore of his body here today
his manoeuvrings to get the irish electorate to get britain to leave the eu demonstrated i believe his poor grasp of the shared british and irish history
more importantly the irish electorate have overwhelmingly declared that our future is with europe that europe is good for ireland and that ireland has a positive contribution to make to the development of the union
i am hopeful that all member states will have ratified the treaty within a short while and that the institutional and democratic and social reforms can be implemented without further delay
the world needs a more effective union to ensure that we can vigorously pursue the objectives of sustainable development economically environmentally and socially
i want to make it clear to you president barroso and to you mr president-in-office that the peoples of europe are demanding action from the union
they no longer need to be persuaded that we need global as well as domestic solutions to the problems we face
what they want to see is the action to actually begin to deal with these crises
they want tangible action not rhetoric
i do hope that we get a commission which is effective which is able and capable in particular of shaking off the dead economic ideology which has brought us to the brink of disaster in europe and indeed around the rest of the world
we must put in place the objective that we have outlined in the lisbon treaty a social market economy which will bring jobs which will bring prosperity and which will bring a decent standard of living to all of our peoples
