The former PD leader, Mr Des O'Malley, said yesterday a No vote in the Nice Treaty referendum would be seen as a selfish spurning of the peoples of central and eastern Europe.
Mr O'Malley said the vote on Nice would say something profound about the Irish people. A No vote would mean "we are inward-looking, self-satisfied and complacent about our national interest and our role in Europe and the world.
"A Yes vote, on the other hand, will mean we are confident about sharing the opportunities for peace and prosperity in the European Union with new member-states."
He said some opponents of Nice were saying they wanted to send a signal to bureaucrats in Brussels. "They should think instead of the negative and selfish signal they would be sending to the peoples of central and eastern Europe. Do we really want to send a signal to them that the prosperous peoples of Western Europe, and especially the recently prosperous people of Ireland, simply want to pull up the ladder behind us?"
He made a strong attack on the "rag-bag" opponents of the treaty, who he accused of adopting a patronising attitude. "They ask us to believe that the peoples of central and eastern Europe don't know what they are letting themselves in for, even though they favour the Nice Treaty. "Imagine if the people of Germany and France had said back in 1973 that the Irish people did not know what was good for them and, despite our wish to join the EEC, we should have been kept out. That is the same patronising attitude we see in the opponents of Nice today. It is totally without credibility and I hope the Irish people will not be influenced by it." He said the opponents of Nice did not deal with the real world. A Yes vote would mean Irish people understood that to secure jobs and prosperity for Ireland we must engage positively with the world as it is, in the European continent and in global markets.
The treaty's only purpose was to make the European Union capable of working effectively with more member-states. "A Yes vote will mean that we are generous to the peoples of central and eastern Europe, who have suffered for most of the 20th century from internal and external oppression."