Europe is a friend to us in all sorts of ways — so let’s keep it that way

DO YOU remember the currency crisis at the end of 1992? Well, I’ll never forget it. I took out a mortgage in the month it started. Like most of us, it was more than I could afford and the first mortgage payment was about double the rent I had been paying in the month before that.

I consoled myself with the thought that the tax relief would help and, anyway, I was buying an asset now instead of pouring money down the drain in rent.

That was small consolation when, under the pressure of rapidly increasing interest rates, my second mortgage payment was £250 higher than the first and the third payment was a further £200 higher again.

I was saved from bankruptcy only when the Department of Finance, after stubbornly resisting for weeks, devalued the punt at the start of February 1993.

The department had argued fiercely that there was no reason to devalue. Ireland was running a current budget surplus at the time, inflation was low and economic growth was running ahead of target.

The economy had clearly turned a corner from the disastrous 1980s. As all the experts said at the time (and they still use that awful phrase), the economic fundamentals were sound.

But none of that prevented the speculators from making money on our currency. In a bid to stave off devaluation, interest rates went up by nearly 40% during the three months of the crisis, and it didn’t do any good. In the end, the crisis of 1992 gave a huge added impetus to the creation of the euro and the European-wide fiscal system that underpins it.

I don’t pretend to understand that system, and I’m certainly not going to try to explain it. But as we read about the madness in worldwide stock markets and watch the frenzy on television, night after night, all I can say is thank God for the euro.

With all this incredible speculation going on, with people and businesses in a constant state of panic, can you imagine what could happen if some super-rich speculator was once again in a position to start attacking our currency?

We might be a much stronger economy today than we were in 1992 — our economic fundamentals are even sounder — but we’re still small and could not afford to allow our currency to be exposed to that kind of speculation ever again.

I can remember another occasion a few years later. In the days immediately after the first IRA ceasefire, I accompanied Dick Spring on a long and exhausting trip, first to meet Bill Clinton in the US and then immediately on to meet a man called Klaus Kinkel. He was Germany’s foreign minister and vice-chancellor, but more to the point, because Germany held the EU presidency at the time, he was president of the Council of Ministers.

The purpose of both visits — to Clinton and to Kinkel — was to try to establish how much financial support could be garnered for the peace process.

It was a central objective of that process to demonstrate that democratic activity produces results and an immediate response by the rest of the world to the ceasefire, in terms of aid and investment for Northern Ireland, would be a massive foundation on which to build further progress.

Of course we knew of Clinton’s commitment to the process. But the immediately positive reaction of the German foreign minister, and his commitment to bring a package of support measures to the Council of Ministers immediately, was a huge encouragement to the whole process at a critical time.

Both of those stories are part of the reason I will be voting ‘yes’ in the Lisbon referendum. There are things I don’t like about Europe and the Lisbon Treaty, it seems to me, hasn’t really addressed them adequately — the lack of transparency, the incredible bureaucracy, the remoteness of all of the institutions from the citizens they seek to serve.

But Europe, in the end of the day, is about people sticking together.

The currency crisis of 1992 has always demonstrated to me that Ireland is much better off being part of a strong system. And the reaction of Europe to the first ceasefire in Ireland has always seemed to me to show that European solidarity is real, meaningful and significant.

Our elders and betters in the Government and elsewhere will be telling us in the weeks and months ahead that we should be grateful to Europe, that we “owe it” to Europe to vote ‘yes’.

Nonsense. Sticking together is in Europe’s interests as much as it’s in ours. Europe works best when the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts.

That’s why it makes sense for Europe to invest in its poorer members, as it did in Ireland since the beginning. You develop the economy of Europe as a whole by

developing its component parts, by linking them together through trade and infrastructure, by helping each bit of the equation to be as productive and competitive as every other bit.

European investment in higher standards within Europe is not philanthropy for which we should be grateful — it’s just good sense.

In all sorts of ways, Europe is a friend for us. For example, when we joined Europe, Irish women were the subject of institutionalised and almost casual discrimination in nearly every area of their lives.

Irish women have used the conventions and standards and norms found throughout Europe in the battle against discrimination. The European courts have found again and again in favour of minorities here and have been powerful allies on behalf of everyone who believes in greater equality and opportunity.

HAVING said all that, of course, there is a real danger that we will all end up too confused — or maybe feeling too hostile to the Government — to be able to vote ‘yes’. Although last weekend’s opinion polls suggested a majority in favour of the treaty among those who intend to vote, there is clearly both apathy and confusion.

If there is still apathy and confusion by polling day, whenever that is, the three parties in government will be 100% responsible. Ever since the McKenna judgment, it hasn’t been possible to spend public money on promoting a referendum, and so responsibility falls on the political parties to do it out of their own resources.

Even with the support of the opposition, you can’t win a referendum on the cheap. The political parties supporting the Government have an absolute obligation to put campaigns together that demonstrate not just their commitment to the cause, but their passion for it.

Already you can hear ministers on the radio and television calling for reasoned debate and promising to put the facts in front of the people. The usual old guff, in other words.

Reasoned debate is no substitute for a committed, energetic campaign aimed at getting clear and honest messages to the maximum number of people.

Our politicians are great at running that sort of campaign when their own survival is at stake. We need to see the same sort of energy for the European ideal in the months ahead. And it needs to start soon.