THE 40th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome was an appropriate time to look at the overall progress of the Union and at its future direction, said Mr John Dardis (PD).
He noted that yesterday's Irish Times had stated that there had not been enough public or political attention paid to the constitutional changes that would take place as a result of the various treaties.
The Irish Times had said that such issues should but probably would not figure prominently in the forthcoming elections.
"Those of us who ran for the European Parliament will recall similar lectures from The Irish Times, that we should confine ourselves to European issues during such election campaigns. Of course, those of us who would confine ourselves to European election issues find that we get no coverage whatever from The Irish Times, which has forgotten what it said earlier and has moved on to the real issues of crime and taxation and so on."
He accepted that such issues would dominate a campaign but he found it difficult to take this sort of posturing by The Irish Times where they were asked to conduct European debates and when they conducted them they found there was no interest in or coverage of them whatever.