Editorial Comment: The Lisbon Treaty

TOMORROW, we decide what kind of a country we will live in. We will decide what kind of prospects we will offer our children.

We will decide if we want to copper-fasten our place at the centre of one of the world’s most powerful trading blocs. We will decide if we wish to play a full part in the community that has brought unprecedented peace to Europe and unprecedented prosperity to Ireland. We will decide if we want to endorse the project that played a lead role in the positive advancement of this society, especially for women.

We will decide if we want to remain proactive members of the community that has done more than any other to build our infrastructure.

We will decide if we want to endorse the enterprise that, more than anything else, allowed us escape our impoverished and subjugated past as a struggling, insular, agrarian society utterly dependent on a dominant neighbour.

Tomorrow, we will decide if we want to remain a respected and vibrant part of the greatest project in European history, one based on the rejection of intolerance and totalitarianism.

We will decide if we want to continue to enjoy the full and generous support of the movement that ended the greatest Irish cancer – forced emigration.

We will decide if we want to remain part of the entity that has fostered democracy all the while balancing the interests of sovereign nations, large or small.

Of course the No campaigners would have us believe that we can have our cake and eat it, that we can reject this treaty and still enjoy the warm, unambiguous embrace of the European Community. They would have us believe that we can reject it and still enjoy the solidarity and protection that, in the last year, saved this small and vulnerable country from bankruptcy and all the chaos that would have brought. This astonishing, dishonest analysis ignores the realpolitik of a world struggling to re-establish economic stability. This is especially so as guarantees have been secured to satisfy the primary concerns that led to the rejection of the treaty last year.

It is tempting too, unfortunately, to reject the treaty to register the entirely justifiable anger with our Government for its failure to protect us all from the greed culture of wantonly irresponsible bankers and reckless and totally selfish property developers, and the way they have devastated our ambitions. No matter how satisfying it might be for many to defy the majority of our political parties and vote No it would be an indulgence we cannot afford. In reality it would make things worse rather than better. We must defer that judgement for another day.

One of the great scenes of contemporary television shows Bart Simpson sitting on his couch flicking through television channels asking “what did science ever do for me?”

Tomorrow, we are being asked if we want to give our children the opportunities Europe gave us. We can be like Bart and remain willfully blind to the obvious or we can confidently embrace a future at the centre of Europe.

This is a pivotal moment and tomorrow we have an opportunity to place ourselves at the very heart of things or to stand in the shadows like a forgotten and ignored half-relative at a wedding.

We should confidently vote Yes, believing that by doing so the opportunities and support we have enjoyed since 1972 will continue into the future. Our place is at the centre of Europe and we must embrace it fully. To do that we must vote Yes.