Quotes
I don't claim any credit for that but I think the convention did a very good job, I think Valery Giscard D'Estaing and his group and the various people who've worked on it have produced a very good convention report, a very good constitution.
I do believe that anyone looking at it and following it, it only takes a reasonable knowledge in public administration and most people do - most people would see that this is a good document.
I actually think the constitution is a far easier one to have it on because the constitution is fairly clear what is it about. It's a constitution that is simplifying, streamlining the rules of procedure, stating the competence of Europe.
I accept people would say from the developing world that it's too slow but I think there is a lot happening.
Every decade of the census in Ireland the population dropped. It has only been in the last decade or so, slightly more than now, that we've seen an increase in population.
Every day practically I meet somebody from the region, some political leader from the region, trying to do this and we'll keep our focus on this. So I wouldn't accept at all that we're in any way.
Can you imagine the effect of that? Proportionately we've the highest number of Nigerians when we entered the Community coming to Ireland. So it's been a huge change for us.
But what happened in the second campaign was that far more people took an interest in the campaign - trade unions acted for it, civic society got involved, employers got involved - they did not want to see Ireland reject enlargement.
But we're continuing - in the presidency - we've worked extremely hard to have a very fair and balanced view.
But we were seeing a situation where people were coming from elsewhere to abuse what was the position which we could not allow to continue.
But they've strong support from the United States, they've strong support from many other countries in Europe and it's going to be hard to say no.
But then you have, like in Nice, when we passed the Nice, we passed the Amsterdam, you pass that treaty and that becomes part of your legal base and we have the Court of Justice which regularly arbitrates on a law.
But the effect of the vote was that enlargement was held up. So we had to go back and change the context obviously to do with the neutrality issue, which was the biggest issue in the Irish campaign.
But our view on citizenship and our views certainly on people coming to work here, which is the question, has been a very open one and a very tolerant one.
But many people in several European countries, and large numbers of Russian people, are coming in, they're coming in on working visas.
But in many other areas there's not and I know there's quite a divergence of views on this. I do think the educational bodies within Europe have to try to agree on their own standards authority.
But a decade ago or so we had one on the Maastricht Treaty. It was about how high finance in Europe was going to work, it was extremely complex - how do you explain that to the man and woman in the street?
Before you could be as competitive as you liked but you'd nowhere to trade your goods and services.
As long as we have a position - I won't move until you move - and won't do this until you do that - you'll never get anywhere.
And the Irish people have coped I think with this very, very well in what is an enormous change for us in terms of what's happened for the last 150 years.