FitzGerald to campaign in favour of ratifying Nice

The former taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald, says he has decided to come out of retirement to campaign in favour of the Nice Treaty.

Although he had retired from politics 10 years ago, the issue of ratifying the treaty was "too important" for this State, the former Fine Gael leader said. He was addressing a Galway Chamber of Commerce debate on Thursday night. "This is my last campaign," he added.

Dr FitzGerald said if Ireland rejected ratification of the treaty a second time, it would risk losing the goodwill of all its EU partners. It would also lose the goodwill of all the applicant states, in fact the whole of Europe, except Norway, Iceland and Switzerland.

He said Ireland had won this "enormous goodwill" since accession in 1973 by being a positive and constructive member of the EU. Ireland's share of the regional funds was almost doubled in 1974 from 3.5 per cent to 6.5 per cent, and this State had received up to 13 per cent of the social funds, in spite of having only 1 per cent of the EU population.

The EU structural funds were also doubled through acceptance of the Irish proposal for cohesion funding as part of the Single European Act, he said.

Agriculture had received countless concessions and special treatment, while the fish catch had quadrupled since 1975, Dr Fitzgerald continued. Other countries had not been allowed to increase their catches, he claimed, and the EU had paid for the greater part of the cost of re-equipping the fishery protection fleet and much of the cost of re-equipping the commercial fishing fleet.

It would be "total madness" for the State to allow a combination of an extreme Catholic right-wing, which rejected even the Pope's support for enlargement, and Sinn Féin, other left-wing parties and the Greens to persuade us to throw away Ireland's future in Europe, Dr FitzGerald said.

During questions, Dr Noel Dorr, a former secretary-general of the Department of Foreign Affairs, defended the Government's decision to hold a second referendum. In the TV show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, competitors were asked "Is that your final answer?", and this Government was doing the same because the decision had such serious consequences, he pointed out.