Controversial Green Party MEP and anti-Nice campaigner Patricia McKenna talks to Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
The Nice Treaty debate is about what kind of Europe we want in the future, not the political associations of Mr Justin Barrett, according to the Green Party MEP for Dublin, Ms Patricia McKenna. Pointing out that Mr Barrett's No to Nice Campaign is only one of the organisations opposed to the treaty, she adds: "Most of the other organisations or parties are not connected to him or working with him."
Mr Barrett has admitted attending meetings of German and Italian parties which are widely regarded as neo-fascist: "For most of us, he is not the type of person we want to be associated with politically, but that doesn't mean we drop our opposition to Nice." She adds that Fianna Fáil is in the same group as "Italian neo-fascists" in the European Parliament and that Fine Gael and Labour were on the same side as Mr Barrett in the last abortion referendum: "I would be completely on the other end of the political spectrum to Justin Barrett." If Mr Barrett was really concerned about the referendum result, he would step down as chief spokesman of his organisation, in the same way that Mr P.J. Mara resigned as Fianna Fáil campaign director after he was named in the Flood Tribunal Report, she says.
Mr Barrett had warned about mass immigration to Ireland from the new member-states if the treaty were passed, but Ms McKenna says she completely opposes all immigration controls. "People cannot label me as racist or xenophobic. I have been to the fore in Irish politics in criticising our own government's racist and xenophobic policy towards third-country nationals coming into this country." She believes in total freedom of movement, with no work permit requirement, pointing out that, in this respect, goods have more freedom than people in the EU. But she believes that the Government should have held a Dáil debate before informing the applicant states of its intention, unlike most other EU member-states, to allow immediate and unrestricted access (although it now appears that work permits may still be required for an initial period). She says that the Government should have been pushing for open access for citizens of the accession countries to all the existing member-states.
Pro-Nice campaigners have made much of the differences between the Greens in Ireland and some of the other European countries on the Nice Treaty. The leader of the Greens in the European Parliament, Mr Daniel Cohn-Bendit, says that the treaty may be a bad one, but it should still be passed. McKenna acknowledges that the German and Austrian Greens, for example, favour ratification of Nice, but she says that the French, Swedish, British and Danish Greens do not.
Many Greens would acknowledge that the EU has often played a positive role on environmental issues, but this is not the point, according to McKenna. "This treaty is not about the environment and it is not about being in or out of Europe, it is not about what is good in the existing EU, it is about what kind of EU we are going to have after Nice." She notes that, on the environment, Fianna Fáil politicians, in particular, had ignored a lot of EU law: "That is why they are in the dock on a number of different counts in relation to non-compliance."
She rejects the contention that Nice is a modest document which will have little impact on the functioning of the EU. "If it is so minor and insignificant, why are they so desperate to push it through?" The new commitment to hold a referendum before joining a European mutual defence pact cuts no ice. "We have no opt-out from the Rapid Reaction Force," she says. She does not trust the Government, particularly on this issue: "Look at their track record."
The controversial Supreme Court judgment forbidding public expenditure to promote one side or the other in a referendum is the result of a case taken by the Dublin MEP. Recalling the background, she says that, in the run-up to the referendum on the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, she and her co-thinkers had found it very difficult to put their anti-Maastricht case in the face of a high-powered advertising campaign funded by the taxpayer.
"I thought this was crazy, my money was being used to make me vote in a particular way." A week before the vote, she tried and failed to get an interlocutory High Court injunction to stop the Government using public money to promote the pro-Maastricht case. She was a part-time art teacher with a bicycle and a personal computer, so taking it to the Supreme Court at that late stage was too big a risk.
A referendum to lift the ban on divorce was in the air and, although McKenna was personally in favour, she felt strongly that public money should not be used by the Government to promote the case for permitting divorce. So in 1995 she went back to court. She recalls the words of Michael McDowell SC (now Minister for Justice), in a related action, that the Government was "looting the Exchequer" to fund its campaign. It was a worrying time. If the decision had gone the wrong way, she and her husband, Martin Gillen, would have lost their house.
The case went to the Supreme Court, the judges found in her favour and the McKenna Judgment was born. It laid down that taxpayers' money could not be used to promote either side in a referendum. The parties and others would still be free to spend their own money, of course, but public funds were not to be touched.
McKenna recalls that the first Taoiseach to think of spending public money directly in this way was "our one and only Charlie Haughey", during the 1987 referendum on the Single European Act. This was one aspect of the Haughey legacy which found near-universal approval with other politicians who preferred to use party funds for other purposes. But it made McKenna even more unpopular with the political establishment.
Patricia McKenna was first elected to the European Parliament in 1994, at the age of 37. Born in March 1957, her family were small farmers in Ardaghey, near Monaghan town. McKenna's father traditionally voted Fianna Fáil and her brother was a "very active" member of the party. She went to the St Louis convent in Monaghan and later to Letterkenny Regional Technical College. She attended Limerick School of Art and Design and the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, qualifying as an artist and teacher of art.
She became involved in the anti-nuclear movement in the late 1970s, especially the successful campaign to put a stop to Mr Desmond O'Malley's plans, as Energy Minister, for a nuclear power plant at Carnsore Point in Co Wexford. An early influence was the late Petra Kelly, a founder of the German Green Party, who had some Irish family connections and often visited Ireland to take part in anti-nuclear demonstrations.
Increasingly active politically, McKenna gave up her studio and got elected to the executive of the European Greens. She topped the poll in Dublin in the European Parliament elections in 1994, got re-elected in 1999 and will "probably" run again in 2004. She disclaims any interest in a Dáil seat: "Whether I like it or not, more and more decisions are being taken in Europe."