Irish enthusiasm for EU continues to fall

Ireland's enthusiasm for the European Union is continuing to fall sharply, according to the latest Eurobarometer opinion poll.

While the Irish remain notably enthusiastic about membership, the new figures show that approval of the union here has declined to 67 per cent, compared with 83 per cent in autumn 2001.

The percentage believing that Ireland has benefited from the EU has fallen from 90 to 77 per cent over the same period, while the gap between Irish and EU average support for membership has halved, from 27 to 13 per cent.

The findings were drawn from the responses of around 1,000 Irish interviewees in March and April.

Commenting on the results, Eurobarometer officials said the changes here were "substantial" and suggested "a significant alteration in the overall orientation of Irish people to European integration".

Their report also finds that, in common with citizens of most member-states, Irish people believe they know even less about the EU and its institutions than they did last year.

The "subjective sense of knowing little or nothing about the European Union has increased significantly in all but three members-states between autumn 2002 and spring 2003," the authors note.

But the 5 per cent rise in such sentiment here puts Ireland "among the four countries with the most widespread sense of lack of knowledge of the European Union and its policies".

With elections to the European Parliament less than a year away, Irish people have a much more positive view of their MEPs than average, with 50 per cent of respondents agreeing that MEPs were good at protecting their interests, compared with 35 per cent in the union as a whole.