Merriman Summer School: "However paradoxical this may appear, future historians will, I believe, come to the view that the ultimate justification for Irish independence lay in Ireland's participation as a member state of the European Union."
So stated Dr Garret FitzGerald, former taoiseach, last night at the Merriman Summer School in Lisdoonvarna, Co Clare.
Dr FitzGerald said: "It was through accession in 1972 to what was then the European Community that the Irish State finally completed the process of separating itself from Britain, upon which it had remained almost totally economically dependent for half a century after the achievement of political independence.
"It was by freeing itself from extreme economic dependence upon its near neighbour and securing access to a much wider European market, that the Irish State, was for the first time in history empowered to take its place as an equal partner in economic terms and not just politically, with the rest of western Europe."
Dr FitzGerald said the implied question lying behind the lecture title "The Two Unions" is why the first of these unions, in which Ireland was given one-sixth of the seats at Westminster, proved so controversial at the time when it was so enduringly unpopular with the great majority of Irish people.
Thereafter, when in sharp contrast the much more recent sharing of sovereignty with many other European states, on a basis that has given Ireland a very much smaller proportionate voice in this second union, has proved so widely acceptable to the people of the Irish State.
He said the Act of Union of 1801 was the seminal event that was to determine directly or indirectly the course of Irish history for two centuries.
The first union, Dr FitzGerald said, was designed primarily in the strategic interest of Britain rather than for the benefit of Ireland. In the second union the reason for initiating and continuing it was the perception of the people's interest on the part of the island involved.
By contrast he said, that although this was little realised at the time with the second union, these features of the Irish/British relationship diminished rapidly as the Irish economy caught up to the EU economy as a whole and as Ireland proved an effective and increasingly self-confident member of the European Union as well as a creative and constructive partner in relation to the Northern Ireland problem.
We have, Dr FitzGerald concluded, not merely benefited materially from closer involvement with the countries of Europe but within this multilateral relationship we have been able to develop a healthier and genuinely warmer relationship with the neighbouring island.