EU COMMISSIONER REACTION:EU COMMISSIONER Charlie McCreevy has pleaded with other EU states not to consider the Irish people ungrateful Europeans for rejecting the Lisbon treaty.
He also reminded Europe’s leaders that Ireland was not alone in being unable to secure a popular endorsement of an EU treaty in a statement issued after the referendum result.
“There will be those who won’t understand and think we have forgotten all the benefits Ireland has obtained from its membership of the EU, but that would be a wrong interpretation,” Mr McCreevy said yesterday.
He had been criticised by No campaigners for not reading the Lisbon Treaty and declaring that any sane person wouldn’t read the 287-page text.
“This vote is not a vote against the European Union, it is about a myriad of other issues,” he said. “I have no doubt that the vast majority of Irish people want to be fully engaged participants in the European Union.”
Mr McCreevy, Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, said politicians needed to learn something from the result.
“There will be inevitable disappointment across the EU at the results of this referendum. That said, the EU will not grind to a halt as a result of today’s vote.
“There are many immediate challenges that we must, by working together in the EU, find responses to, not least being rising food and oil prices, an economic downturn and the threats of rising unemployment.”
Other top Irish officials in Brussels, including the European Commission secretary general, Catherine Day, and the director general for trade David O’Sullivan, would not comment on the result of the referendum.