What has Europe done for us?

(RTE Radio 1) is a new fourpart series in which Tommy Standun asks what almost 35 years of EU membership has meant for Ireland. If this sounds a little dry and worthy, don't worry, it's not.

Interesting that Standun began with fishermen, who have lost so much to Eurocracy. It sort of sets a tone for the whole series. And it turned out the main gripe that emerged fully-formed from the programme was not with the European Union, but with the Irish government, for selectively enforcing EU directives.

There was a bit of a scare at the start of the programme, when Standun said: "For most of us, poverty is a word associated with a bygone era, when a bountiful supply of spuds and buttermilk was all we needed to have us dancing at the crossroads." This sounded like one of those Montrosian assessments of the national psyche:

RTE seems to believe the words "de Valera" are never far from our lips, especially anywhere west of the Red Cow Roundabout.

Luckily Standun didn't go any further with that line of thinking. From then on, he allowed the people who work in fishing to tell their own story of how their livelihoods have been picked clean, and of how this has brought about the downfall not only of the fishing industry but of the Irish fishing village.

Standun chatted with west Cork fishermen: they sounded melodious at least, even if you couldn't understand a third of what they said. "We were sold down the Swanee river by our TDs, " said one, Sean O'Driscoil. "The big mistake is that we didn't have a 50-mile exclusive limit." Asked what had Europe done for him, O'Driscoil said: "Absolutely nothing".

Then Standun spoke to fishermen and former fishermen drinking in O'Regan's pub in Schull. The EU, they said, has put most of the fishermen out of the water. "I blame our government as much as Europe, like, " said one. "I just think they have no meas on the fisherman."

The men seemed somehow resigned, which may have to do with the seafaring character ...weatherbeaten, reticent, and having nearly always seen worse. Not so resigned, though, was Sally Barnes of the the Woodcock Smokery. If fishermen were as articulate and as willing to stay mad as Barnes is, things might be different for them.

Barnes began processing smoked mackerel a couple of years ago, she said, but last year "the entire mackerel quota for this country was caught in three weeks in February".

She is furious about the ban on drift-netting: "It has decimated me, " she said. "It has absolutely ruined my business, because I will not work with farmed fish."

She also sees it as unnecessary: "There are at least 39 identified reasons why Irish salmon has been disappearing over the last 20-odd years. Driftnetting is just one. . . There is no point banning driftnetting because it is not going to put any more fish back into Irish rivers unless the rivers are clean."

Tomorrow's programme looks at what Europe has done for farmers, a subject on which most people have an opinion already, right or wrong.

Farmers, like fishermen, are not all that popular with the Marks & Spencer's-fed urban intelligentsia.

But unlike fishermen, farmers have strength in numbers, and the ear of government, and an aptitude for complaining. On present form, Standun looks likely to present us with new ideas about the EU agriculture story.

Eithne Tynan