Bertie Ahern
It will be the first major Muslim country. I think that could be a good thing.
It will be a debate in Parliament, a debate in parliamentary committees and then it is up to the people who join in the campaign and who puts resources into the campaign.
It was the right to claim Irish citizenship regardless of your fidelity or contact or solidarity or connection with the country in any form.
It was actually the financial mechanism, it was the Maastricht referendum. In Nice we would have stopped enlargement.
It is inevitably slow on these issues, but it will happen.
It is a sharing and pooling of sovereignty, it allows people to enhance, I think, their own position and collectively work on all kinds of issues whether it is trade, whether it is agriculture, whether it is education. And I think that is a very powerful issue.
In some of our counties, in some of our areas, of Ireland we only have in recent years an increase in population. So for us now to have immigration from Eastern Europe, from the United States - many Irish people returning.
In our case it was the opposite - we opened up new strengths - I mean things like Riverdance are now on the world stage where it would have only been in parts of Ireland at one time. Irish writers have opened up to new markets.
In our case employment has been strong and that has worked very well for us.
In my local hospital, which is one of the biggest hospitals in the country, we've now 29 nationalities.
In fact the truth of it was - I was finance minister then - it was hard enough for us to explain it to each other.
In fact on the first vote in Ireland, and perhaps what the caller was referring to, we had a lot of outside money - outside of Ireland - that was put into Ireland on the 'no' campaign from anonymous people and that certainly wasn't a good position either.
If Edgaras comes under what I've stated 1st May he can come here without a visa, with restriction, his qualifications I think not only within Europe but we have now people working here from Singapore, from Malaysia and their qualifications are accepted.
I've said at the outset, different countries have their own constitutional provision. Some countries have no constitution so people have to make their own decision, otherwise that would be an interference.
I've been deeply involved with those negotiations, not only during the Irish presidency but of last year as well, very much following what's happening.
I'm not raising an issue about the date by just saying that decision has to be made at the end of the year but I don't see any major obstacles to their membership, over the remainder of this decade certainly.
I'm a bit disappointed that so many people have closed up on their barriers, that's why we have been very anxious to keep our position.
I think within a community the standards should in all professions, as I say in many of them there's not an issue, but I know in teaching and particularly in language teaching there are different views and different standards.
I think what we're doing in overseas development aid, which he acknowledges, many European countries, and Ireland included, are trying to up our contribution to help in the development into the free market, that is a good thing.
I think what we have to do is to try to say listen we have to stop those things that are wrong, we have to look at those things that are positive.