Ireland was miserable and poor before joining EU

Letter writer Marie Hanna says that “I’d much rather be poor and Irish” than “slowly losing my land, my people, my laws, to another country, another agenda” [Irish Examiner Letters, October 21]. 

She says this because she does not like some aspects of EU membership. Is she not ignoring some historical facts? We were poor and lost our land and laws to another country during centuries of colonial rule. Even when we got our independence, we had decades of poverty and emigration.

We could have lost land, people and laws had one of the two totalitarian dictatorships, which reduced much of Europe to rubble during WW2, succeeded in taking over the continent. An EU of 30 democratic countries, with a home market of 500m people, is not perfect. But it improves when you think of the alternatives.