VB: Why were you opposed to Ireland joining the Common Market from the outset?

AC: The basic thing was concern about this unique development of handing over sovereign powers from Dublin to Brussels. Fundamentally, that it was a move entailing the transfer of democratic control and responsibilities of the people from Ireland to Brussels. It meant a dilution of democracy.

VB: Now in retrospect, do you think you were wrong to oppose Ireland joining the Common Market?

AC: No. I don't think I was wrong because the Common Market has evolved very much in the undemocratic direction which I feared from the beginning that it was going to do.

VB: Would you say that Ireland's participation in Europe has been good for the country in the last 27 years?

AC: It has its benefits and it has had drawbacks. The most obvious benefit being the rise in incomes for farmers which was the main economic reason that we joined. Probably, there's something in the claim that it has widened the horizons for Irish policy-makers from being dependent on Britain, we are now dependent on Brussels and it's a wider horizon.

VB: How about the more general benefits - the structural and cohesion funds, the single market, the contribution that EU membership has made to our economic success?

AC: We could have a lot of argument about what proportion of economic growth is due to cohesion funds. You must remember that in the 1980s, 10 years after joining the Common Market, we had the emigration of one-sixth of our labour force and the unemployment of another sixth. I don't think that was primarily due to the Common Market, but you might say it was due to bad policies we had in the '80s.

Likewise in the last seven or eight years, we've had a huge boom. Our economic growth rate doubled since 1993-94. I would think it was primarily due to the fact that was the only period in the history of the Irish State when we floated the currency and at a highly competitive exchange rate. Now to what extent was our boom in the last few years or our slump in the '80s due to the Common Market? The Common Market raised agricultural incomes but I think it is ludicrous to suggest the high Irish rate of growth over the last 30 years, or the boom in the last seven or eight years, is due to the Common Market. Norway and Switzerland had booms as well.

VB: What do you think would have happened to the country if we had accepted the advice of you and your associates at the time and not joined?

AC: Well, we can only speculate. . .

VB: It is likely to have been a disaster?

AC: No sensible person said at that time we should be bound, that we wouldn't have to change policies. One of the most obvious policies which I always thought was very relevant here was to have an independent currency, but you must remember way back in 1973 we still had a link with sterling. We might had had a bonanza from our fish for all we know. But my essential point is that we surrendered our sovereignty to a non-democratic body.

VB: What is undemocratic about it? Our accession was approved by the Irish people and reaffirmed in referendums since then. We are represented at the Council of Ministers by a minister elected by our Parliament.

AC: The laws in Brussels are not made by a body elected by the Irish people. We only elect the Government, which appoints one minister who then goes out to Brussels. We are bound by Brussels legislation in vast areas of economic and social life. Even if we are all against it, even if the Irish Government is against it, even if the Irish people are against it, even if the Irish Minister votes against it, if the Council of Ministers so decided it becomes law and there is nothing we can do about it.

VB: Why shouldn't we be bound by those laws? The Council of Ministers makes laws for the entire European Union and we have a disproportionate say in the decision. How is it undemocratic therefore, at least from our perspective?

AC: Because, for a democracy you need not just majority of rule, you need majority of rule on the basis of a community where people are willing to obey majority rule. The European Union is not such a community. There is no European demos, there is no European democracy.

VB: What do you mean, that people are not willing to obey? What's the evidence of people not willing to obey?

AC: Because generally when people are ruled by foreigners, people outside their own country, they find that they have difference of interest and there is no demos. Demos is the Greek word for a people and democracy. Democracy is rule by the people. Who are "the people" here, there are no "people", just "peoples", that is the problem.

VB: Let's move on to the Treaty of Nice. What's wrong with the Treaty of Nice?

AC: The Treaty of Nice represents a huge shift in voting and political power from the small states to the big states within the European Union.

VB: In other words, it's been made a bit fairer because under present arrangements the smaller states have a vastly disproportionate say in decisions at the Council of Ministers?

AC: Well, as John Bruton said in the Dail before Christmas, it's astonishing that at a time when one is seeking to get a lot of smaller countries in from Eastern Europe to join the Community that they should shift the votes in the direction of the big states and that's what's happened. Basically the voting weights of the big states have been tripled, are increased threefold, the voting weights of the small states have increased two-fold.

VB: With regard to that, we still have a disproportionate say.

AC: Well, it's seven votes out of 345. That's one-fiftieth.

VB: But that gives us about 7 per cent of the votes with less than 1 per cent of the population, what's wrong with that from our perspective?

AC: As everyone knows, most of the decisions are taken in practice by the big states, if they want something they tend to push it through.

VB: So the change brought about by Nice makes no difference, is that it?

AC: It's not the basis of a proper federalist system. Federalism implies equality among the member-states.

VB: Why should a tiny minority of people in Europe have the right to decide the future for everyone?

AC: All sovereign states are equal or should be. But the main objection to the Treaty of Nice is that for the first time it allows sub-groups within the Union, a number of states out of the 15 or out of the 27, as they eventually envisaged it becoming, to go ahead and form a kind of, become first-class members against second-class members of a two-class two tier Union. That's a fundamental departure from the EU as it has been up to now.

Whatever one might argue about the decision to join, we did join and that's all water under the bridge. What's now being proposed is a very fundamental departure.

VB: What's wrong with enhanced co-operation, as it is called? If people want to engage in co-operation in a deeper level than other states. Why can't those states that want to do it, get on with it?

AC: Well, it's perhaps a seductive and misleading phrase to cover the fundamental breaking away from the principal basis on which the EU has operated up to now. The principle was that nothing fundamental will be done, no fundamental change will be made without everyone agreeing and that is the basis for the EU being a community. Now that is to change. We're being asked, in other words, to permit the EU, which has been a partnership of legal equals up to now, to divide into a two-tier Europe, first-class and second-class membership, an inner circle and an outer circle system. That has not been possible up to now because any such development had to be unanimous.

VB: What's wrong with us agreeing to an arrangement whereby states that want to have deeper and closer co-operation, having that?

AC: If Germany and France and others want to form a federation amongst themselves, they are perfectly entitled to do so as long as their people agree. But I suggest it is not permissible of them to hijack the EU institutions, the Commission Council, Court and Parliament which we have been committed to for the last 30 years in order to implement their state interests, the interests that Germany and France are currently pushing.

VB: How are we in any way disadvantaged by this?

AC: Because it turns the EU, which has been a parliament of legal equals up to now, into a two-tier system and it means the states on the fast track will be in a position to lay down the law for the rest of us, using the institutions of the Community in doing so.

VB: How can they lay down the law for the rest?

AC: Because, the inner group that set up the federation will have a single voice. I can give you quotations from Joschka Fischer (the German Foreign Minister) and others which indicate they want to speak within the Union with a single voice.

VB: OK, apart from the two-track issue, what else is there about the Nice Treaty of which you disapprove?

AC: This is moving the goalposts for all of us. It was a community of legal equals in which nothing fundamental would be done without everyone agreeing. Now in the Treaty of Nice, if we agree to it, we permit the Germans, the French, and those who go along with them to move ahead without the agreement of everyone else. .

VB: Is there any other basis for your objections to the Treaty of Nice?

AC: Well, having agreed to give more weight to the bigger countries, having agreed to divide Europe into two parts, we then agreed to abolish the national veto on some 30 different areas.

VB: Doesn't this make sense? If the veto is not abolished or at least massively curtailed, and if up to 15 new states become members, isn't it a certainty that the whole project will grind to a halt?

AC: At present the Irish State has a veto, it can say no to something it fundamentally disagrees with, such as the division of Europe into two parts. But now we're being asked to give up our veto on that.

The European project is doomed. It just won't work. It is already generating huge hostility and opposition and is doomed to fail. It's against all the laws of economics, for instance, to have a fiscal union and not a monetary union They are pushing out the monetary union for political reasons, to set up a federation in effect.

But you have to answer the question, if the Irish wanted to change a law, unanimously, they're totally against something, the Irish Government, the Irish Parliament, the Irish Ministers, they still cannot change a single European law, how is that democratic?

VB: One final question: Would it be your wish that Ireland would now disengage from the European Union?

AC: That's an impractical question because there's no movement for doing that. I certainly think that the country, its interests, are not served by pushing towards a two-tier EU because that fundamentally alters things.

VB: But, in general you have opposed our involvement at every single stage of the way. Would you wish that we got out?

AC: I would wish the European Union to be fundamentally transformed.

VB: Would you wish we got out?

AC: I wouldn't put it like that because I think that's a fallacious way of putting it.

VB: Why not? We have the option of getting out. Why, from your perspective, should we not get out?

AC: Certainly, I would wish us to get out of the Single Currency Project and I would certainly wish us not to go ahead with the proposals for the Treaty of Nice. I'm quite happy with the Free Trade Arrangements and the Agricultural Policy and there's various other things in the European Union but they're not at issue now. What's being talked about is going further in.

VB: But you opposed all those other initiatives that you are now quite happy with or at least prepared to live with them.

AC: I'm not quite happy about them. One accepts them as facts of life, as water under the bridge. There's no prospect now of changing what has happened in the past. Shall we go deeper in, that's the question and I urge the Irish people not to agree to do that.