- Mr President, I represent all of the 400 km of the border areas of what is called the Republic of Ireland, and I want to thank the House for the time it has devoted to this problem. I hope that this occasion will cause Members to reflect on the problem and that, instead of being confused and frustrated, they will try to understand its origins and why it is that this is the last malignant sore on the face of this European Union.

When you reflect on it you can see that this conflict has all the ingredients of all the old divisions which blighted Europe for centuries and which were faced up to and finally overcome by the founders of this Union. Northern Ireland is at the point today at which the people of this Union were in 1945. They are in the process of working out an alternative to the conflicts of the past. I believe that violence has not won anything for the people of Northern Ireland, and that the people of violence have at last been persuaded by the peaceful majority. We all look forward to a new start.

We should today pay tribute to the democratic parties in Northern Ireland who have maintained the democratic system over the past 25 years. I want to pay a special tribute to John Hume, who trod a lonely and sometimes dangerous road in the search for peace and reconciliation, and to the party which went along with his leadership. I would also like to pay tribute to the Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, the chairman of whose executive, Mr Jim Nicholson, is a Member of this House and has joined with my group in the mainstream of democratic politics in this Parliament; and I want to say that the conflict in Northern Ireland could have become a full-blown civil war of the sort we have seen in other places, and that it did not. It did not, because of people like Jim Nicholson and John Hume, because of the example of the European Union, and because of the statesmanship that was displayed by the Irish and British Prime Ministers, indeed, past and present, which avoided the ultimate disastrous conflict which, than

kfully, has not occurred in Northern Ireland.

The people of Northern Ireland were slow to accept the potential of the European Union as a framework within which their political problems could be seriously diminished. No state, no region of this Union is any longer in a position to regulate its own destiny, and neither is it left alone with its problems. That is why all the old arguments about where the boundaries of states begin and end are obsolete today. The unification of the two communities in Northern Ireland and the unification of Ireland can largely be accomplished within a united Europe without any constitutional changes on the island of Ireland, although some are necessary. If you stop to think of it, all the main things which determine our economic and social welfare - industry, commerce, tourism, agriculture, fisheries - all the things that will determine the standards of living of the people of Northern Ireland, are decided within the framework of common institutions for all the people of Europe. That is why I believe that if we give the ide

als of Europe - as John Hume said - a chance to work on the island of Ireland, if we open up communications, facilitate the internal market, then, I believe, we can find a real solution. I do not want to pretend that within the Union there is an awful lot we can do with economic aid. The ECU 4m is relatively small by comparison with the ECU 200m we already give. But in any case we are extremely grateful for it. It shows good intention and will create moral support for the people of Northern Ireland.

(Applause)