“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”

This may be my last Green Column as a public representative. Local Elections are to be held on the fifth of June and my fate is in the hands of the electorate of Ennis West and Ennis Town Council. I am passionate about the European Union, often to the annoyance of my political peers who tell me that there are no votes in Europe. So I will probably annoy them further by using this opportunity to drone on a bit about the EU.

What has prompted me to write this was a meeting I attended recently where Mr Declan Ganley, Ireland’s international man of mystery, was in Ennis laying out his stall of handy chat and vague niceties to about fifty people.

I found myself heckling Mr Ganley as he spoke, this is something I have never done but the more he spoke the more annoyed I got and this drew the ire of his admirers in the hall. Anyway, the situation deteriorated when Mr Ganley refused to answer my questions and some people in the audience wouldn’t let me ask anymore. I have done a small bit of background on the type of candidates Mr Ganley and his Secret Libertas are promoting across Europe.

A quick survey of those candidates and their previous affiliations would indicate that Libertas is carefully building a pan European ultra right wing party with traditional right wing views. These views include an ultra nationalist, anti-immigration, anti-semitic, homophobic, anti-Islam and white European policies. Not all candidates have all these views but many have. The result is a picture of an organisation that is disturbing to say the least. Listening to Mr Ganley speaking that night where he vowed to cut administration and send a message to the fat cats reminded me of an episode of the Simpsons where Mr Burns, the owner of the Springfield nuclear power plant, ran for senate. His real agenda was hidden also. Mr Ganley and his fellow travellers need to stop concentrating, exclusively, on the things that are wrong with the EU and recognise the many positives about it.

The EU has its flaws, nothing is perfect, but the EU has achieved many positive things. Fifty years of unbroken peace in most of Europe, this must not take for granted in that there are generations that have never known war. The EU is the largest donor of Development Aid in the world. The EU, through its Directives, sets high environmental and social standards. The EU has given the world positive leadership as well as employment, pensions, parental leave, health and safety, and equality legislation. Irish citizens have benefited from this leadership. Countries wishing to join the EU have to sign up to a body of law called the "Acquis". This means that those countries have to adopt systems and structures and subscribe to the values of democracy and the rule of law. This brings prosperity, not just a monetary prosperity, but prosperity of spirit and culture. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe have seen how Ireland, Greece and Portugal have benefited, and want the same. The Lisbon treaty reforms the way that decision making happens in the EU, so that it allows the EU to make decisions more efficiently, allowing in new member states without 'seizing up'.

I believe that Mr Ganley wants the EU to seize up; he serves masters who don’t give two damns about the future of the Irish economy and the truth of that is apparent when he denies the effects that a further rejection of the Lisbon treaty will have. I believe he is up to no good. I am not so sure why. A grand aunt of mine had a saying “never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”. Mr Ganley is not stupid.