What difference has membership made?

The experience of membership
 

Over the last 36 years of Ireland’s membership, we have played a full part alongside our partners in changing and developing the EU.

The 1970s proved to be a period of deep global recession, causing great difficulty for all EU member states. They were also difficult years in Ireland as we adjusted to the demands of free trade and the open markets.

Improvements in the international economic climate during the mid-1980s coincided with ambitious initiatives at EU level to progress the European project. The most notable was the decision of Ireland and our EU partners to remove all remaining barriers to cross border trade and to create a true Single market.

Such ambitious plans involved significant changes to the terms of Ireland’s membership and to the Treaty we signed up to in 1973. All of necessary changes to the Treaty were approved by the Irish people in successive referenda.

For example, the Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty) set out clear rules for a future single currency. It also introduced closer forms of cooperation between member state governments - for example on foreign and security policy and on justice and home affairs. It changed the name from the EEC to European Union (EU).

Benefits

During the period of 1989-1999 Ireland’s receipts from EU structural funds averaged around 2.6%of Gross National Product (GNP).

The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) estimates that such funding increased GNP by two percentage points.

Our strong modern economy is the direct result of Ireland being in the European Union.

In the thirty six years since Ireland joined the EU/EEC, the country has undergone huge changes. Membership of the EU has often led directly to many of those changes and influenced many others.

There are very few aspects of Irish life which have not been affected by our membership of the European Union.

The following are ten major changes in Irish life during that period:

1. Our population has grown rapidly

A sign of a successful country is when the population grows rather than falls.

In our history, Ireland has suffered periods of population decline - worst of all because of the famine of the 1840s - as a result of economic under-performance.

Our population reached its lowest number of 2.8 million in 1961, the time when we first applied to join the Common Market. When we joined the EEC in 1973, the population numbered 2.9 million. 
 
Preliminary estimates by the Central Statistics Office put the population in 2008 at 4,422,100. That's an increase of one and a half million people in just one generation, a rise of 50%.

This is unprecedented in our modern history. And few other developed countries have had such a rapid, positive change in their national life. Recent population growth in Ireland exceeds that of any country in Europe.

Mass emigration in the style of the 1950s and the 1960’s - when over 200,000 people left the country in 5 years - has been reversed.

That is a mark of a successful, growing country, a country building a future for the next generation. It has coincided with the period of our application for, and joining of, the European Union.
 

2. We live longer

In one generation, and now as part of the European Union, there are not just more of us – we live far longer too. In line with improvements in medicine, healthcare and education, life expectancy at birth is up 8 years.

In 1973, when we joined the EEC, life expectancy at birth was 68 for men and 73.5 for women in Ireland. Now it is 76.8 for men and 81.6 for women.

In recent years, life expectancy in Ireland has increased by more than any other European country.
A child born in Ireland is now expected to live longer than a child born in many other European countries. 
 

3. Our standard of living has improved enormously

When we joined in 1973, Ireland was one of the poorest countries in Europe and living standards here were amongst the lowest in Europe.

In 2008, as the economy developed rapidly, being part of the single market, our purchasing power was estimated as the second highest in the EU.

From being the bottom of the class in terms of living standards when we joined, we are now ahead of the EU average.

Even with the economic downturn we are currently experiencing, it is estimated that we will still have income per person of about 20% higher than the EU average, while for many years we were below the EU average, sometimes by as much as 40%. 

4. Education levels are higher 

The number of Irish people with a higher education has never been larger in our history.

More children are finishing secondary school than in previous years.

Five times more students are in third level education now than a generation ago when Ireland joined the EU.

The European Social Fund (ESF) is an EU fund for investing in people, education and skills. To date, over €6 billion in Social Funds have been invested in Irish people and in improving our skills.

EU funding for research in Irish universities and third level colleges is now heading for €600m.

5. Farming and agri-enterprise has been supported and modernised

In the first years of EU membership, there was a lot of economic adjustment needed.

However, while those changes were difficult in some sectors, farmers and farm families did well from the start.

Since membership in 1973, Ireland has received over €60 billion from the EU, of which €44 billion - more than two-thirds - went to agriculture.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers and their families have been supported for over 35 years. Farms of all sizes have benefited.

Without membership of the EU and the common agricultural policy, Irish farmers and rural communities would be much poorer today.

6. Jobs and business have won in a single market of 500m people

The Irish people voted to join the Common Market in 1973. In 1987, we also voted to complete the Single Market by removing remaining barriers to trade and investment through the Single European Act.

And since 1987, Ireland started to create over a million new jobs as part of the European Single Market.

We won new investment and jobs in Ireland because we provided a platform for doing business in the wider European market. Many new businesses and jobs were generated here by winning contracts in Europe and the wider world.

Our full participation in this market helped us to double employment in 15 years to approximately 2 million.

The type of jobs we have has been transformed - from low wage manufacturing and agriculture to high skill level, high productivity and high wage, export-based jobs.

We have developed new international services, produced in and sold from Ireland. We have entered into new markets in Europe, Asia and around the world where we never succeeded before.

We have become one of the most open economies in the world - exports make up nearly 90% of our economy. This is rare. In the largest exporting country in the world, Germany, exports make up about 40 per cent of GDP.

Apart from there being thousands of talented Irish people with the right skills here, Ireland being a full member of the EU gives Ireland free and open access to a market of over 500 million people. 

As a result, roughly 165,000 people are directly employed in the international companies who are here because Ireland is at part of Europe and part of the Euro.

Trade has increased ten fold as the Irish economy changed into one of the most open and globalised economies in the world. 
 
Exports have increased since we joined in 1973 and we no longer depend on the UK as an export market in the same way. Exports there have fallen from over half of all our exports in 1973 to less than one fifth of our exports today.

Over the same period, the share of our exports which are sold into the rest of Europe has increased from about 20 per cent to over 40 per cent today.

 
7. Our currency, the euro, is now strong, stable, global currency

In 1992 Ireland voted to join the new Single Currency, the euro.

In the 1990s, we organised our economy and finances so that we would qualify as part of the first series of countries in 1999.

Euro notes and coins came into circulation in Ireland from the start on January 1, 2002.

The Euro is our currency now. We have representation on the European Central Bank (ECB). It’s a strong global currency.

Our ability to deal with the financial crisis is massively supported by being part of a large currency group. An Irish currency on its own would have been battered by the global financial storm that hit in September 2008.

Being part of the Single Market with a Single Currency means it’s easier to travel, to create jobs, to compare prices, to win new business.
 

8. We have built modern infrastructure with EU Structural Funds

When Ireland joined the EU in 1973, there was relatively modest funding for regional development.

With the Plan agreed by EU leaders in 1992, the Delors Plan, Ireland has benefited from over €17billion of EU Structural and Cohesion Funds, including the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund (ESF).

We’ve invested most of this money in infrastructure, research and development (R&D) and on programmes to promote social inclusion.

The LUAS has received EU funding support.

Water treatment plants, sewage works, rail lines, and bus services throughout the country have benefited from EU financial support.
 

9. Membership of the European Union gives Irish people the right to move, work and reside freely within the territory of other Member States.

10. European Economic Recovery Plan

As the global economic and financial crisis has developed, the importance of the EU in promoting recovery and stimulating demand has become increasingly clear. This is of particular significance to Ireland’s open export oriented economy.

In December 2008, the EU launched a European Economic Recovery Plan of approximately €200 billion or 1.5% of EU GDP, funded directly by Member States.

The plan includes €5 billion of additional EU Budget funding, which will be used to fund energy projects, rural broadband infrastructure and measures to meet the challenges revealed in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) health review, including climate change. Ireland will benefit from part of this funding.