IRELAND'S HAND at EU negotiations will be strengthened by a Yes vote in the upcoming Lisbon Treaty referendum because no other country will have a mandate from the people, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said.
In an impassioned address to the Ógra Fianna Fáil conference in Tullamore on Saturday, Mr Ahern urged the party's youth wing to campaign strongly for a Yes vote.
"This vote is important to you. It is key to and crucial for your generation. I ask you not to sit back and say that it will be passed anyway.
"Anything else would be seen by the rest of the world as an incredibly stupid decision. It would not be understood why a country doing so well, that has built its foundations out of European membership, would reverse all of that. You don't make that mistake."
The adoption of the Lisbon Treaty was necessary if the European Union was to continue to take a leading role in pushing for global action to tackle climate change, he said.
"It is Europe that has forced George Bush and that has forced China into addressing this issue, and to take it seriously. At the start of the Bush presidency, he didn't quite frankly want to know.
"The Chinese believed that they could develop into a great economy and not bother with the environment.
But it has been Europe that has forced the issue to make climate change and the environment the big issue that it is all over the world today, so that your generation and future generations don't suffer from the lack of action," he told conference delegates.
Ireland's attractiveness to foreign multinationals was based on the country's pro-European Union stance.
"They are coming here because we are a key country in Europe. Staying central to EU decision-making is vital for your education; to those of you who are already working so that you can have a future here.
"It isn't a mythical issue that is a vote about nothing. It is a vote about the economic future. It is a vote about what we have built up painstakingly for 35 years. It is about where we go for the future. It isn't a vote that doesn't matter, so that we can sit in the bar or watch the TV on the night of the vote. It will matter. It will matter about whether this country stays strong and grows."
The No camp were putting forward "the same old issues" that it had done from 1972 on, he said, "that we would be in a super-army, that our children would all be conscripted into armies, that our economy would be ruined, that we were far better on our own.
"They were the State protectionists. That is when we had less than a million people working and the rest all emigrating for jobs. But we copped on. Now we run a good country and a good economy under the able hands of the Tánaiste. We don't want to go back to any of those stupid policies. They were stupid when they were said first and they sound more stupid every time they were said since," Mr Ahern said.
In his speech to the Ógra conference, Minister for Finance Brian Cowen said: "Those who like to attack the union, like to throw around the word 'sovereignty', claiming that the EU is the enemy of national sovereignty, that it is trying to subsume us all into a super-state.
"The fact is that, for Ireland, the EU has helped us to achieve real sovereignty in an ever-more globalised world. Instead of having to simply follow the course of what is decided by others, we have been able to participate in and shape these decisions.
"Imagine a circumstance where the EU did not exist or was an empty talking shop with no real power. What possible influence would Ireland have on issues fundamental to our ability to compete and prosper?" Mr Cowen said.
