THE EUROPEAN DEBATE

"That this House Regrets Ireland's Rejection of Nice"

8th November 2001

You can usually tell from the tone of a phone call if its purpose is to convey information you don't really want to hear. So when my phone rang the evening of the European Debate as I was pacing up and down the kitchen of my house waiting for a taxi to bring me to the airport to meet Nuala Ahern MEP, and the caller began with the words: "Hello, is that Mark Hanniffy?" a feeling of deep foreboding arose within me. After confirming that it was indeed myself on the line, I heard those fateful words: "Hello, this is Nuala Ahern.., I'm afraid I have some bad news for you..."

There are many things you might anticipate happening that could almost ruin a guest-speaker debate. But the idea that someone for some reason pushing a construction crane into the River Liffey could put paid to our long-awaited Nice Treaty debate seemed to be stretching credulity just a little bit far. Nevertheless, such appeared to be the case - a crane working on the refurbishment of the Ha'penny Bridge in Dublin had been toppled into the Liffey, with the result that the South Quays had to be closed for the rest of the evening, traffic in the city was brought to a standstill, and Nuala hadn't made it to Dublin Airport in time for the last conveyance of any sort out of the capital which would have brought her to Galway in time for the debate. The novelty of that particular chain of events was little consolation to me as I sat shaking my head in the realisation that I now had a grand total of one anti-Nice speaker for the debate which was supposed to start in less than two hours' time.

Ah but it could all have been so different The summertime dreams of David Byrne, Bertie Ahern, Gerry Adams and Pat Cox all descending on the Kirwan to sway the students of UCG with their eloquence and erudition had been shown to be a small bit ambitious. In fact, the idea of getting any group of reasonably well-informed speakers who were all free to come to Galway on the same night seemed for quite a while to exist more in the realm of dreams than of realities.

It al1 began, I suppose, with David Byrne. Frenzied consultations with our mole inside the European Commission, the ubiquitous Mr. Oliver Begley-Wall, had produced a letter of invitation so well crafted, so enticing and so utterly irresistible that we were sure we'd have the commissioner on the next plane to Galway. We then proceeded quite obliviously to send Mr. Byrne the very first draft of the letter, which had somehow been translated into a font size of 24 points, and apparently looked about as impressive as if it had been written with a crayon. He decided to speak at the UCD L&H instead. (Although he did eventually pull out of that engagement, a development which caused us some considerable upset... honestly...)

With the commissioner out of the picture, our attentions turned to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen. Our initial letter wasn't replied to for over a month, when an email arrived from the Minister's personal assistant looking for up-to-date plans for the event. Up to date plans were provided. No response was forthcoming. Eventually, knowing that the people of Offaly have their very own means of communication, we dispatched our very own version, Mr. Enda Dolan, to follow up on the invitation. The following Monday, a phone call came from the Minister's office. Minister Cowen was in New York chairing the UN Security Council, but had indicated before he left that he'd be delighted to come to Galway to debate, and November 8th was the date which would suit him best. They'd get back to us by the end of the week with final confirmation. Things were looking good.

And so, after a trip to the Buildings Office to let them know that we didn't care about that chemistry conference, we had the Minster for Foreign Affairs and we needed the Kirwan on 8th November, we started to ring our other possible speakers and tell them that a date had been set. First on the list was Alan Dukes, whose reply to our original invitation had apparently gone missing, which was a something of a problem because in it he told us that he'd love to visit the Society and would come down on September 27^th if that suited. The result was a Wednesday evening phone call from his secretary "just to confirm all the arrangements for tomorrow", which I must admit surprised me somewhat. Much as the temptation was to bring him along to the Gibs' Symposium, we got back to him to let him know that the debate had had to be postponed, and we'd call him as soon as a definite date had been identified.

Then the bombshell came. The end of the week arrived, but there was no confirmation from the Department of Foreign Affairs. Worrying. The following Monday, I rang the Minister's personal assistant. The conversation went like this: "You know what I'm going to do now, Mark? I'm going to crawl in under my desk and put my head in my hands because I don't like giving people bad news. ." It seemed that with the extra workload of chairing the Security Council in the aftermath of the September 11^th attacks, Mr. Cowen's diary had filled up rather more than had been expected, and he'd been forced to reassess his intention to speak in Galway.

And so we scampered about and tried to get as many speakers as we could to attend on a date that had been chosen to suit someone who wasn't attending any more, Joe Higgins was free, as was Alan Dukes; having invited every single Green Party TD and MEP we found that John Gormley had believed that Trevor Sargent was attending and had made other arrangements, while Sargent was otherwise engaged; Nuala Ahern agreed to attend, and the Department of the Taoiseach stepped in to ensure that the government was represented by arranging the participation of Frank Fahey, the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources.

By six o'clock on the evening of the debate everything seemed to be proceeding as planned. Joe Higgins had arrived in his hotel, and although Alan Dukes was delayed slightly, he was on his way and in plenty of time. Two members of the Lit & Deb hospitality crew were being dispatched to bring Messrs. Higgins and Dukes to dinner, while I had booked a taxi for 6.15 to bring me to the airport to meet Nuala Ahern. The taxi was late - worrying at the time, but a godsend in retrospect - and so I found myself pacing the kitchen at 6.20 when the phone call came from Nuala Ahern.

She was very apologetic about it all I assured her that I understood the situation, realised there was very little she could do, and thanked her for her efforts to attend. I put down the phone and started to

wonder how on earth we were going to manage now.

A panicked phone call to Oliver Begley-Wall elicited the following idea - ring her back, get her to fax down the speech she intended to deliver, and get a representative of the Green Party in Galway to

deliver it on her behalf A masterful piece of crisis management. The only problem was that the number she'd just called me from was withheld and I had no sure means of contacting her - I just had to hope she was still in Dublin Airport.

So I rang directory enquiries, got them to put me through to Dublin Airport, and had them page Nuala Ahern MEP. Thankfully she was still there, and surprisingly quickly was at the other end of the

phone line. I asked her if she could fax down her speech and help me arrange a local Green Party representative to deliver it. She was happy to oblige - at which point it became apparent that a fax machine would be rather useful. Luckily, the front office staff of the Forster Court Hotel- where the speakers were staying and were due to dine - were happy to let us use their machine, and within five minutes Nuala Ahern's speech was lying on the table in front of me.

Niall Ó Brolcháin, the Green Party candidate for Galway West, then rang to say that he was aware of our problem and would see what he could do to help us. I was beginning to think everything might work out after all. A short time later, however, he rang back to tell me that he was otherwise engaged that evening and he couldn't locate anyone else who could attend on the Green Party's behalf. I determined that we'd just have to get someone from the committee to deliver the speech, and hope that Joe Higgins didn't mind being the only active participant on the opposition side of the debate.

I suppose it did all work out in the end. Higgins and Dukes duly arrived and sat in on most of Private Members' Time - extended slightly more than we had anticipated as a result of the fact that there

was no sign of Frank Fahey. While our two eminent statesmen listened to a debate on the creation of a polar bear sanctuary in Corrib Village and a motion condemning Samantha Mumba for her denial of the existence of leprechauns, it transpired that Minister Fahey had managed to get himself stuck in a meeting.

We gave him twenty minutes and decided to start without him. Alan Dukes stood up to open the debate; before he'd finished his first sentence the Minister swept into the Kirwan and down to his seat. At last - at long last - everyone who was due to come had arrived.

The debate turned out to be an excellent one. Alan Dukes gave a very detailed and comprehensive speech, Joe Higgins was passionate in his remarks, and somehow managed to weave the whole polar bear sanctuary idea into his speech, Frank Fahey, refreshed by a mysterious ministerial cup of coffee, could only be described as combative in his response to Higgins. And the humble Vice Auditor managed to metamorphose into a female Green Party MEP and read out the contents of that fax.

At the end of the day, the motion - "that this House regrets Ireland's rejection of Nice" - was defeated. Joe Higgins was delighted. I met him in Dublin the following week; after thanks for the invitation to speak, he said 'The main thing is that we won, didn't we!" - and when an independent TD and a fax manage to defeat a Cabinet Minister and a former leader of the opposition in a debate, I suppose he has every right to be pleased!

Mark Hanniffy (3rd Science)

Vice Auditor 2001-02