PEOPLE BEFORE PROFIT:THE GOVERNMENT is deliberately keeping the public in the dark about the detail of the Lisbon Treaty to ensure the referendum is carried, the People Before Profit Alliance claimed as it launched its No campaign yesterday.
Eddie Conlon of the group's steering committee said he would encourage everyone, including the Taoiseach, to read the Lisbon Treaty.
Earlier this week, Mr Cowen acknowledged he had not read the text "from cover to cover", but said he had negotiated 95 per cent of the treaty and knew exactly what was in it.
Mr Conlon said No campaigners had been accused of scaremongering but they seemed to be the only people who had studied the treaty. "I think when people read what's in the treaty they will find that what we say is true."
He said the treaty would lead to the further militarisation of the EU because it called on member states to increase their military spending and obliged them to make their facilities available for EU military activity.
Richard Boyd Barrett said the treaty was an obvious attempt by EU leaders to deceive the European public. "What's absolutely clear at the heart of this is an attempt to ram the treaty through that nobody can understand and to avoid, if at all possible, people having any say on it."
He said politicians on the Yes side never talked about the substance of the treaty. "In particular you do not see them address the specific aspects of the treaty that have been highlighted by the No campaign around the issues of democracy, around the issues of militarisation, around the issues of the threat the Lisbon Treaty poses to our public services."
He said the Lisbon Treaty was "a recipe for privatisation of public services in Europe, for the further militarisation of the European Union, for the creation of a European army that's going to have a more aggressive military role on the world scene."
