MINISTER FOR European Affairs Dick Roche has launched his strongest attack yet on anti-Lisbon Treaty group Libertas, accusing it of running a "deceitful" campaign aimed at misleading the business community.
Libertas, the organisation founded by Galway businessman Declan Ganley, has paid particular attention during its campaign to the impact it claims the treaty will have on taxation, arguing that the text contains provisions that could be used to change the Republic's corporate tax rate.
Last weekend, aviation entrepreneur Ulick McEvaddy mentioned the tax rate issue when he announced he was publicly backing the Libertas campaign against the treaty.
Mr Roche said yesterday that no organisation in this or any previous referendum had been as guilty of "distorting facts and barefacedly mangling the truth".
Referring to Libertas as a "shadowy outfit", he said the group had been "particularly deceitful" in its statements on issues to do with job creation, business and taxation.
Its positions on these matters were "completely at variance" with the views of groups such as Ibec, the Small Firms' Association, the Dublin and Cork Chambers of Commerce and the American Chamber of Commerce, all of which had expressed their support for the treaty.
"Libertas has made a series of distorted and in some cases downright untruthful statements on areas of key importance to business," Mr Roche said.
"Its statements on foreign direct investment, taxation, business regulation and competition policy are recklessly inaccurate and are clearly intended to mislead the business community and inject confusion into the referendum debate."
Mr Roche insisted nothing in the Lisbon Treaty would endanger the Republic's foreign direct investment policy or low corporate tax rate. "[ Libertas] protests an interest in protecting Irish business and yet it dismisses the views of those in Irish business who know what they are talking about," he said.
Libertas spokesman John McGuirk dismissed the Minister's comments. "Dick Roche is obviously reading the same polling as us and he is starting to get worried. Businesspeople are having second thoughts on the Lisbon Treaty," he said.
Libertas was in negotiations with several business figures with a view to endorsing the campaign as Ulick McEvaddy had. "We are confident of getting their support," he added.
A heated dispute also arose yesterday between Libertas and Fine Gael over a statement issued by Dublin South East TD Lucinda Creighton.
In the statement, Ms Creighton said Mr Ganley and Mr McEvaddy were respectively involved in businesses that provided products and services that had defence applications, or had the US military as a customer. She contended these interests might have influenced their stance on the treaty.
But Mr McGuirk accused Ms Creighton of trying to "kneecap her opponents" rather than engaging in meaningful debate.
"Not anywhere in her comments does she substantiate her allegation that 'Messrs Ganley and McEvaddy's own personal economic and military interests in the US must be directly informing their own positions in opposing the Lisbon Treaty'," he said.
Meanwhile, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said the electorate should resist the temptation to use the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty to "give the Government a political bloody nose".
Mr Gilmore, who was speaking in Cork, said that if people wanted to demonstrate their anger with the Government, they should wait for next year's local elections.
"I fully understand the anger that people feel with this Government," he said. But to vote No "would truly be a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face", he added.