875,000 Irish jobs depend on EU ties - Cowen

Some 875,000 Irish jobs depend on economic activity related to our trade with Europe, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Fianna Fáil Nice campaign manager, Mr Brian Cowen, said yesterday.

Mr Cowen, speaking in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin at the party's press conference on the employment effects of Nice, berated what he called the scare tactics of the No campaign. "These are exactly the same people who have said exactly the same thing in the past. They were wrong then and they are wrong now," he said, warning of the "extreme foolishness" of those who might assume that we have left behind forever the days of unemployment and immigration.

Mr Cowen said that by being positive Europeans "we opened new markets . . . we got a level playing field for our companies . . . we received huge investment in our education and training systems . . . we attracted foreign companies to create over 100,000 jobs here . . . and we got influence and allies in maximising the benefits of EU decisions for us."

"We live or die by our exports," Mr Cowen said.

"We have now reached the situation where fully 50 per cent of everything we produce is exported to the European Union.

"Look at the evidence of the last 30 years," he said.

"More trade has brought more jobs for Ireland."

And there is a huge potential in the market of 100 million being opened up by enlargement, Mr Cowen said.

Since its accession, Irish trade with Spain had grown from €300 million to €3,000 million, the Minister said.

And he appealed to voters to listen to the voices of the leaders of business and the unions appealing for a Yes vote and demonstrate the nation's "generosity and good-spiritedness" to the candidate countries.

Also at the press conference, Ms Rita Bergin, chair of the SIPTU national women's committee, urged women to remember the gains they had made from the EU, ranging from the Equal Pay Act to the ending of the marriage bar in the Civil Service.

Meanwhile, the Minister of State for European Affairs, Mr Dick Roche, said yesterday that the constitutional protection of Irish neutrality being proposed by the Government as part of the Nice vote merely "makes explicit what is already implicit" in the Constitution.

Responding to a question about a Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA) complaint to the Referendum Commission, Mr Roche said that the group, by admitting as much, had completely "falsified" its own case against the Nice Treaty.

PANA has complained to the Referendum Commission about an advertisement in which the body, which is supposed to be providing factual clarification of the treaty, claimed that by voting No voters would leave the Constitution without any protection of neutrality. PANA says that many lawyers back its view that the Constitution contains implicit protection of neutrality.

Mr Roche said yesterday that "if they have changed their stance [to admit that such protection already exists], they have falsified the arguments that they put forward on Nice that somehow or other the Nice Treaty challenges our neutrality."