Mr President, may I at the outset offer Sweden my congratulations on its effective presidency. I will be forgiven for concentrating on the Irish situation. The Irish people have spoken. The answer is 'no'. We must respect that decision. Could I plead with the Commission, the Council and indeed the summit to be sure that decision is respected in what they say and in the signals they give. They must analyse it and not treat it as an irrelevancy, sending a message that with or without Ireland they will proceed. If that were the case, they would not need ratification from all 15 Member States. If it is not the case, they must not treat the decision as an irrelevancy. I say this to them as a passionate 'yes' voter, because they are causing more damage with the post-Nice referendum signals they are sending than with any pre-Nice referendum signals they sent in Ireland. Please be careful. The complexity and the lack of clarity of the Nice Treaty allowed a huge range of issues to be tagged onto the debate during the Irish referendum, issues relevant and irrelevant to Nice, causing concern and fear among the people, which resulted in a huge abstention with a paltry 34% turnout, of whom 54% voted 'no'. In other words, 19% of people entitled to vote voted 'no' and signalled an unwillingness to proceed with enlargement, because that was what Nice was about. Please believe me when I say that I do not believe that the Irish people wish to deny the accession countries the opportunities and support that we as a small under-developed country have experienced and put to great use over the last three decades. Our government was obliged by a Supreme Court decision to spend as much money telling the public the reasons to vote 'no' as the reasons to vote 'yes'. The media was likewise obliged to give as much coverage to the 'no' campaign as to the 'yes' campaign, without challenging the irrelevancies, despite the fact that all the major political parties, farm organisations, trade unions, press editorials and even the Conference of Bishops urged a 'yes' vote. There was an assumption that the outcome was a fait accompli. Perhaps that explains why our government did so little, took the electorate for granted and was content to mine the Eurosceptic vote for the forthcoming general election, with several ministers in recent months giving very ambivalent signals. Commissioner Solbes Mira's reprimand angered middle Ireland and raised fears of Europe meddling in our tax affairs. Statements from Mr Jospin and Commissioner Prodi during the campaign did not help, but the responsibility for investing time and energy in the campaign lay primarily with our government, and it failed. The 'no' campaigners, starting from behind with nothing to lose and no one correcting the irrelevancies and, worse, the scare-mongering, beavered away. I voted 'yes' and I resent the implication that by doing so I am pro-abortion, anti-neutrality, pro-NATO, pro-nuclear power, pro-euthanasia. The list is endless – take your pick. They are all issues worthy of debate, but nothing to do with the Nice Treaty. We need time to reflect, to analyse the outcome, to learn from it, to respond to the legitimate fears and concerns and, above all, to try and understand why 65% of the electorate stayed at home. Was this an indictment of the European project or a mid-term wake-up call to our political establishment? The jury is out. Following our government's announcement last night of a new multi-party national forum to explain and discuss the European project in general and Nice in particular, I hope a more informed, reassured Irish electorate will allow our government to ratify the Nice Treaty in the next twelve months or so.

Political group: PPE-DE