The re-run of the Nice Treaty referendum was a "sinister attempt to establish a two-tier EU, driven by the larger member-states and their multinational business mentors," according to the leader of the Green Party.
During a debate on the treaty at the National Ploughing Championships in Co Laois yesterday, Mr Trevor Sargent said these mentors wanted to wreck local food economies to increase dependency on intensive farming methods. If the treaty was ratified, he said, farmers faced significant problems - a weakening of influence because of fewer votes in the Council of Ministers, the loss of the Irish veto and the loss from time to time of an Irish commissioner.
Another problem was that support for Irish agriculture would now be shared between competing budgets. The Nice Treaty would further militarise the EU by incorporating most western European military decisions with the establishment of the new political and security committee.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, who visited the championships yesterday, said it would be tragic if Ireland rejected the treaty. It would be a major blunder if farmers were to vote against it because of any current difficulties as nowhere more than in farming were the economic benefits of being in the EU more evident.
The Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, welcomed the decision of the main farming organisations to support Nice and said a Yes vote would strengthen Ireland's negotiating position in the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. He said his party understood farmers' genuine fears in relation to issues such as CAP reform, but these were not connected to the treaty.
"People should not use the occasion to lash the Government just because they were fooled in June," he said. "A Yes vote is a vote for Ireland, not for the Government, and the opportunity will come again to lash the Government."
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, said the treaty ended the notion of a two-tier commission because it was the larger nations such as Germany, France and Britain which would be giving up their entitlement to a second commissioner.He said no country would receive special treatment and from the next commission, it would be one commissioner from each state.
When the Union reached a membership of 27, and this could be a decade away, there would be a rotation on the basis of strict equality.