EU50: Offaly TD stresses need to assert a robust sense of national self-determination

Laois/ Offaly Dail Deputy Carol Nolan stresses that much of Europe's Christian identity was forged by early Irish monastic communities

LAST December the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen made an address to the Joint Houses of the Oireachtas, of which I am a proud member representing the great people of Laois-Offaly.

On that occasion President von der Leyen described Ireland as being at the heart of Europe despite the peripheral nature of our island geographically.

That is certainly true in the sense that so much of Europe’s Christian identity has been forged throughout the centuries through the work of early Irish monastic communities and thoroughly Irish-European saints like St. Columban whose monasteries became centres of European cultural learning between the 6th and the 8th century.

It has been my experience however that despite these fine words by President von der Leyen, and despite our rich cultural contribution to European identity, many Irish communities and many sectors in Ireland now feel increasingly isolated and somewhat betrayed by the modern incarnation of the EU.

They feel it has developed structures that have radically departed from the original founding vision which had a genuine understanding of key Catholic social justice concepts such as solidarity and subsidiarity.

Subsidiarity, or allowing communities and individuals to determine and do what they can at the local level has all but vanished. Instead, we have a heavily top-down model of EU governance that has led to an increasing sense of both disconnection and even of cultural bullying.

Our farmers tell me on a weekly, if not a daily basis that they feel excessively over-regulated and that what were once relatively simple and straightforward decisions are subject to complex levels of environmental compliance.

Our fishermen and fisherwomen know what it is like to experience the juggernaut of EU limits on what and how much they can fish in their own territorial waters.

Those in our communities with turbary rights feel threatened by the imposition of an EU green agenda that seems indifferent to the cultural value of bogs and turf cutting.

Every sector is feeling the downward pressure of the EU’s commitment to net-zero targets which are not just unrealistic but will and must come at a punitive financial cost.

There are also increasing concerns around the EU’s propensity to delimit and devalue the nation state and the concept of sovereignty and neutrality as most people would understand it.

While I accept without question that Brexit and the decision of the UK to take itself out of the EU has caused significant challenges for our agriculture and trade, I do understand the impulse to push back against threats to national self-determination and legitimate autonomy.

In this sense I believe there really is a massive, and I would say, ongoing and ever-deepening problem in EU governance with what has been termed the democratic deficit.

President von der Leyen remarked last December that after half a century of European membership, Ireland “is the country your ancestors fought for and dreamt of.”

Only the most ardent Europhile could believe that. For many the EU is now a nightmare of labyrinthine bureaucracy and political over-reach.

I value collaboration. I value friendship among nations. I believe there is a renewed need to not just preserve but to rediscover our European identity and its Christian roots.

I believe that 50 years on, it is way past time for Irish Governments to radically reassess our role within the EU and to adopt a far more critical stance toward its policy objectives. Drifting along in the EU’s ‘progressive’ current is no longer acceptable.

We must reassert a more robust sense of national self-determination on every area of EU policy that impacts us.