 It would have been a pleasure. Pe llawer na. I see one of two familiar faces from my previous visits to Ireland around the room, and I feel very honoured to have been invited to speak here on Europe Day in a year when Ireland is holding the presidency of the European Union for, I believe, the seventh time, Ac mae'n ddifod am fe ble'r ddweud i ddeugoddig dweud. Rydym eisiau mawr maen nh速mu i ddweud. Mae'r EAA, wrth gwrs, rhan i'w drafod y rhaglen o'r ransol yn amlwg. Mae'r Ddweud i Gwyrddol IEau yn meddwl i'n rhan a ffraegol i'r rhaglen o'r rhaglen yn eistedd. Ac mae'n rhan i'r rhaglen i'r rhaglen o'r rhaglen o'r rhaglen o'r rhaglen i'r rhaglen o'r rhaglen. Mae'r rhagleniadau wedi'i gwirioneddau a Yrland yw'r wych yn ysgrifennu eu chael. A yna'r prif erbyn yw'r cymorth yn rhan fwyaf o'r effriss ffwrdd, ei wneud a'r eu rhan fyddion yn gwneud o'r ysgrifennu eithaf ychydig yng Nghymru yw'r rhai, eich eu ffaluol yn ffain i gael. Yr ysgrifennu'r cymorth yn y gweithio yma mae'n gweithio'r cyfrifir yng Nghymru. I'm now working towards a joint visa arrangement for the common travel area. We're working jointly to promote tourism to these islands. When I was in Belfast yesterday, I learned that the revitalised Titanic quarter is now the second most popular tourist destination on the island of Ireland, second only to the Guinness Brewery here in Dublin. ac ydych chi'n gobeithio, ac mae'n rhaid i mor gweld fel gweithio, dwi'n gweithio'n gweithio yma, yn ddweud o ffrindio cyflogion i gyd-dwylo'r gwahodd i gyd-dwylo'r gwahodd mewn gwirioneddol. Mae'r cerdd o'i llwyth i gyd-dwylo'r cyfleu'r cyfrindio a'r cyfnod o'r gweithio'i ymddangod oherwydd i'r gweithio'r gofyn yn y Ffyrdd Bryddiadol ac mae'n dweud o'r newid yw i'w gweithio'r cyfnodol yw'r rhanuobl gwneud ar ysgol a'u gweithio'r reliant ar ffosil. A, wrth gwrs, mae'r rhaglen yw'r rhaglen wedi'i gweithio'r rhaglen yw'r rhaglen yw'r rhaglen, mae'n dweud bod yn gwybod i'r rhaglen a'r rhaglen o'r past. A'r ystod, mae'r rhanwys i'r camera a'r tyshoc yw'r gwirio'r gofynau o'r cyfnodol ar gyfer y past. The decade between 2012 and 2022 has already witnessed and will witness many more significant anniversaries, particularly the centenaries of the Alster Covenant, the Battle of the Somme, the Easter Rising and the Government of Ireland Act. As we move forward, I know it is the determination of governments in both capitals that we should work together to remember these events in a way that encourages mutual understanding and respect. Now you've invited me here to talk about one aspect of our relationship which is our shared future in Europe. 2013, of course, marks the 40th anniversary of Ireland joining the European community in 1973 alongside Britain and Denmark, bringing to nine the number of member states. Recalling that nine was the total then makes me envious of the people who held my job in those days in terms of the number of countries that they had to get round. A football match was played at Wembley Stadium that year that pitted representatives of the three newcomers against the six existing members and I'm pleased to report that the newcomers won 2-0. In January this year, T-Shark Ender Kenny looked back on Ireland's EU experience when he spoke to the European Parliament. The Irish people, he said, had made a good decision to join and to travel far and well. In the United Kingdom we too need to understand better what EU membership actually means for us. That is why last summer the coalition government launched the balance of competencies review to give us an informed evidence-based analysis of the impact of EU membership on the United Kingdom. Officials will produce 32 reports over the next two years looking at everything the EU does and how our EU membership affects the UK in everything from the environment to education to the impact of EU enlargement. To undertake this task as thoroughly as possible we are seeking evidence from the widest possible range of experts and interest groups in the UK and beyond. From business in particular, but also from think tanks, from civil society groups and others. I want straight away to tackle a common misconception. The review is not designed to end up in conclusions with some list of powers that we will seek to repatriate. The review will not be making specific policy recommendations at all. What it will do, rather, is to provide an accurate and fair summary of the evidence. What the assessment is of how, for example, British business views those things which have been of value about the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union, the single market, the leverage on trade. And where, too, they think things are going wrong, whether that means a particular directive or regulation or whether it means a particular treaty article that they would want to see amended. It will provide, in some, a wealth of evidence and objective analysis which I hope will inform a constructive, serious and better informed debate about Europe within the United Kingdom. We hope, too, that our review will provide an additional contribution to the broader European conversation about the future of the Union. And so we are keen to hear from others both in government and outside, across Europe, on these issues. For addressing the challenges that Europe faces in the 21st century, and coming up with solutions that will work for all, we'll call for the sharpest analysis that we can muster. The Taoiseach has said that it is in Ireland's strategic national interest for the UK to be at the heart of Europe. I agree, and when the British Prime Minister gave his own speech on Europe one week after the Taoiseach spoke, there were some who assumed that they already knew what David Cameron was going to say. Indeed, there were some who went on Twitter, made their press announcements confident in the content of that speech before they indulged themselves by actually reading what the Prime Minister said. And those who studied the speech saw straight away that the Prime Minister was not making some pitch to leave or disengage from the European Union. Far from it, he was clear that Britain's strategic national interest is to be part of the European Union shaping the policies of the European Union, rather than having to adjust to rules, practices, ways of working established by others without us having a seat at the table, a voice or a vote. But the Prime Minister Cameron said too, and this is true, that the European Union is losing public support and not just in the United Kingdom, and we all need to face up to this fact. The Eurobarometer Survey published in 2012 showed that 69% of people in the United Kingdom tended not to trust the European Union as an institution. And some might respond by saying, well, that's exactly what we would expect. But let's look further at those Eurobarometer findings. 69% of people in the UK tended not to trust the EU as an institution. For France, those figures were 56%. For Germany, 59%. For Spain, 72% of the population responded in a way that most fair-minded commentators would have described as Eurosceptic. And in Spain's case, that figure of 72% was up from 23% only in 2007. And recent elections right across Europe have showed an increase in support for movements that challenged the authority of the status quo. We've seen that in election results from Italy to Finland, from France to Greece. And in the worst cases, we have seen genuine public grievances and anxieties exploited by parties and movements such as Golden Dawn and Jovic that can fairly be described as neo-fascist in character. Economically, the EU is seen as currently delivering lower living standards, frozen incomes and few jobs for young people. And politically, the EU is increasingly perceived as inflexible, undemocratic and unaccountable. And what the Prime Minister set out to do was to sketch an alternative vision of a reformed Europe that is more competitive, more open, more flexible and more democratically accountable. A Europe that delivers not just for the United Kingdom, but for the rest of Europe too. And a Europe, a reformed Europe that he would campaign heart and soul to stay within. Now that speech sparked a genuine debate right across Europe. And I'll say straight up, not everybody agrees with our point of view nor do we expect them to. But I think there is growing agreement on the need to pose these questions and a growing sense of urgency about the need for us to find the answers. Both Tishor Kenny and my Prime Minister have noted how Europe has been transformed in the last 40 years. In the United Kingdom in the 1970s, we're in error when we had an astonishing 12.9 million work days a year lost to strikes. At times a three-day working week, inflation that peaked at 25% and we had to go to the International Monetary Fund for a bailout that was then the biggest it had ever given. And those who remember those times in the United Kingdom can remember what it was like to have your freedom of action constrained by the need to please your creditors. Now we live in a digital age. With industries that weren't conceived of 40 years ago, the internet, smart phones, the low carbon economy, computer graphics, online retailing and much more. The single market has broken down borders, unlocked opportunities and helped to bring prosperity to both our countries. Ironically, it took the economic crisis to make people on both sides of the Irish Sea fully wake up to how important our two economies are to each other. Ireland's four and a half million consumers constitute the fifth largest export market for British goods. Forecast to Oxford Economics suggests that Ireland will overtake France as the UK's third largest export for both goods and services by 2030. In return, the United Kingdom remains Ireland's largest export destination. 16% of Irish industrial exports go to the UK, a position that's not changed since the introduction of the euro. And our best estimate is that some 50 billion euros worth of goods and services flow across the Irish Sea each year. Meanwhile, investment from the United Kingdom into Ireland since 2003 has totaled 10.5 billion pounds, creating 55,000 jobs. The Irish Development Agency lists the UK as the third largest source of new investment in Ireland for 2011. In 2010, net FDI by Ireland into the UK was 1.3 billion. And in spite of all this, the single market has struggled to keep up with the pace of change. It's good single marketing goods, but very far from fully developed when it comes to services. And over the years, great snares of regulation have built up, making it harder for businesses to hire people to take on new work and to grow. Economically, we face huge challenges. We must manage the consequences of a decade of irresponsible borrowing and lending by governments and financial institutions alike. And while dealing with that legacy, we have at the same time to respond to an historic shift of global power to the emerging economies of Asia and Latin America, and to a transatlantic balance in which, after a number of years in which Europe appeared to be closing the competitiveness gap with the United States, the Americans have now opened up the margin once again. In Ireland and in the United Kingdom, we both know that there are no easy, pain-free answers. But the basic truth is this, unless Europe raises its gain, unless Europe becomes more competitive, the next generation of Europeans will not be able to afford the standards of living, the social protection or the public services that today's generations take for granted. Today's global race means keeping up not just with Germany or France, but with Mexico or Indonesia or Turkey. So how can we hope to build a more competitive and open Europe? First is huge potential for reform of the single market and the wider European economy. Significant non-tariff trade barriers remain within the single market. Recent analysis suggests that current trade between the UK and other EU member states could be as much as 45% below its potential, equating to untapped export potential of around £80 billion. Development of the digital single market by 2020 could result in a 4% increase in GDP in the EU. We've waited years for pan-European iTunes that could help to bring British or Irish music to an even wider audience. But at the moment, we don't have a continental market in digital trade, either for retailing or in business-to-business transactions. The Americans do. The Chinese, the Indians and the Brazilians are building such fast. And until we get our act together in terms of a common framework for payment systems and consumer protection and the ability of online services to sell freely across national frontiers, we're still going to be in the position we are today where 40% of European citizens each year buy something online, but only about 1 in 10 transactions cross a national border. We need to a deeper market in services. Services make up about 70% of EU GDP, but less than a quarter of intra-EU trade. Effective implementation of even the existing services directive across the EU could add by our estimate £30 billion a year to the EU economy, 2.6% of GDP. Competitiveness also means keeping taxes on employment at enterprise low, a point that both the UK and Irish governments understand. And it means reducing and not adding to the cost and complexity of business regulation. No-one is suggesting that we revert a century and to send little boys up chimneys to clean them. But we certainly welcome the ambition of the European Council to make solid progress on scrapping regulations for small and medium-sized businesses over the course of this summer. We need action to deliver the exemption from new regulations for micro-businesses that all 27 heads of government agreed last year. Action on the basis of the scorecard recently published by the Commission, which listed the 10 most important regulatory burdens that European business themselves had identified. And certainly speaking in Belfast yesterday I was talking to a number of business meetings there. What came through to me from them and from politicians of all parties and perspectives in the north was that in an economy overwhelmingly based on small and medium-sized enterprises, reducing the cost and complexity of regulation, was one of the most important priority tasks to be tackled at both national and European level. Now it's true that our fastest growing export and investment markets in the future are likely to be in emerging economies. And there are some, one or twos of distinguished former statesmen who argue that the only way to restore growth and competitiveness is to leave the European Union. That is not the view of the coalition government. It is the case still that Europe is the destination for about half our exports and it is forecast to remain Britain's number one market for at least the next 10 to 15 years. At the moment the United Kingdom exports more to North Rhine West failure alone than to the whole of India. We also gain a bigger share of foreign and direct investment into the EU than any other EU member state about 26% of the overall total. Now partly yes this is due to the attractiveness of UK conditions but it is also down to the fact that we are part of that European single market. It's clear too that our best chance of securing ambitious free trade deals with the United States, Canada, Japan and the major emerging economies is through Europe's collective trade leverage. Trade with countries outside the European Union is expected to provide an increasing share of essential jobs and growth over coming years. In 2010 we agreed an EU trade deal with Korea. Last December a trade deal with Singapore was settled. Talks with Japan have started this spring and we hope to conclude a deal with Canada soon. But the largest prize is now within our grasp after decades of waiting and that is the transatlantic trade and investment partnership with the United States of America. I know that this deal achieving it is the highest priority for both Prime Minister Cameron and for Tishok Kenny. It is an objective on which I am glad to say my Prime Minister is also working hand in glove with Chancellor Merkel. We hope to make progress at the G8 leaders meeting in Northern Ireland in June a meeting which the Tishok is due to attend. The European Commission estimates that this one deal alone would be worth 545 euros to a family of four in Europe every single year. If one looks beyond that on a more strategic level by sweeping away not just tariffs but non-tariff barriers we would in practice be creating and shaping global regulatory standards on a transatlantic basis rather than sitting back and waiting probably for some Pacific agreement in a few years time with Europe then having to play catch up and seek to copy that. For the Prime Minister as well as talking about competitive that's talked about flexibility in the EU and I want to say a bit about what we mean by this. David Cameron said that we want to reform the EU for the benefit of all member states. Flexibility within the European Union reflects Europe's diversity, the breadth, depth and variety of the Union's membership is both its charm and its great strength. Now as things stand now some countries are in the euro others are not and for as far ahead as I can foresee that is going to remain the case and it will not only be the United Kingdom that remains outside. Some countries take part in the Schengen arrangements, others including ours have retained their border controls, 24 countries have signed up to the EU patent, three have chosen not to do so and almost every member state has issues that it regards as sensitive whether that's agriculture, shipping or savings banks where national interests have been accommodated. So the EU's flexibility to deal with variety is a strength and not a weakness and our collective future is not about who's joining in and who isn't it's about embracing and mobilising the enormous cultural, political and economic diversity of 27 soon to be 28 different countries. Flexibility doesn't mean that there are no rules. Flexibility is completely compatible with the single market and rule based structures but that doesn't require everything to be harmonised. A point actually recognised years ago in the Court of Justice Cassis de Dijon judgement and the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. Supposed to lie at the heart of the treaties and the working cults of the European Union but too frequently ignored in practice themselves embody the principle that we should not always seek to be prescriptive and centralised but should rather allow space for different ways of doing things in different parts of the Union within a commonly agreed framework of action. So a more effective EU does not have to mean a bigger, more expensive or indeed more centralised EU. At the moment too many people feel the EU is a one way process that more and more decision making is taken from national parliaments to the European level to everything is decided by the EU. That needs to change and if we cannot show decision making can also flow back to national parliaments then the system will become democratically unsustainable. There is one further but very important point I want to make about flexibility. The establishment of the single currency, the search of its 17 members for a framework that will help them towards long term stability and growth points towards greater fiscal and economic integration. Now the timing of that, the scope, the nature of it is something for our friends in the Eurozone to determine and we will not engage in public lectures. But in addressing that dynamic which derives from the single currency we need to find a way of doing so which protects those things that are of value at 27. Whether that is the integrity of the single market or the duty of the institutions to act and speak on behalf of all member states and not just anyone subset. And the arrangements that we reach for example on banking union have to be designed in a way that accommodates the legitimate interests of all and a fair to those who are in the Euro and those who are outside. And it will mean difficult complicated negotiations. We've shown with the single supervisory mechanism that you can do that and come up with a deal which everybody accepts is fair. But there will be many other occasions when we have to confront this relationship between 27 and 17. But I think that single currency dynamic itself is going to require an acceptance of flexibility, an acceptance of a model of differentiated levels of integration depending on which countries or which area of policy we are looking at. Third and finally, one of the key points of the Prime Minister's speech too was the need for greater democratic accountability and the Euro barometer figures I cited earlier show a worrying disconnection between the EU and its peoples. And the latest opinion polls show growing levels of skepticism across the continent. As the EU continues to evolve, as more member states in the western Balkans and beyond seek to join, we must ensure that people continue to be heard. Now I believe that national parliaments remain the main source of democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU. That is not to denigrate the important and hard work that so many members of the European Parliament do, nor to deny that the European Parliament has an important role to play under the terms of existing treaties. But the political reality when we look around Europe is that most people focus upon their national parliaments as the means of holding political decision makers to account. That is where the voices of people across the EU can be heard and that is where the connection of the people to the EU can be strengthened. And I believe that national parliaments need to play a more active role in the functioning of the EU. Now is the time to start thinking and discussing how this could happen. We could improve, for example, the functioning of the existing yellow card mechanism by improving cooperation between national parliaments through COSAC, the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of the EU National Parliaments. We could consider giving COSAC a power or perhaps simply establishing a working practice that COSAC or national parliaments could summon a European commissioner to explain a proposal to national parliamentary representatives. And certainly at national level we in London are looking hard at how we can improve our own scrutiny arrangements. We could look at the existing yellow card procedures under the Lisbon Treaty and ask whether their scope could be broadened to apply in cases where not just subsidiarity but proportionality had been breached. Or perhaps turn the yellow card in some circumstances into a red card where a sufficient number of national parliaments had the right not only to insist on the commission reviewing a proposal, but to the power to block a proposal from coming forward further at all. And of course when it comes to Britain the Prime Minister has said that as leader of the Conservative Party he will in his 2015 manifesto offer the British people a chance to have their own say on Europe after the next general election. Chairman it is clear that the European Union is vital to both our country's futures. And I believe that we face an imperative indeed we have a duty to our electorates to use the current crisis as an opportunity to reform and reshape Europe to make the Union an organisation to which we will feel proud to belong in the years to come. And more importantly to which ordinary voters will feel that they can once again entrust their confidence. Britain is playing a full part in this debate. We are committed to helping shape the future of an open, flexible and adaptable European Union. And we want to work with partners like Ireland to achieve a better deal for all Member States. We are not saying it will be easy but we think that change is necessary, it is inevitable and it is achievable. Thank you very much indeed.