Green MEP Ms Patricia McKenna has criticised the European Commission's secretary-general, Mr David O'Sullivan, for becoming involved in the Nice referendum debate.
"For paid civil servants to be intervening in this way is to completely overstep their role," Ms McKenna told a meeting hosted by the Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA) in Galway at the weekend.
Mr O'Sullivan, the highest ranking Irish official in the commission, had defended his involvement when speaking to journalists at a meeting in Dublin on Friday.
The campaign in favour of the Nice Treaty was using "propaganda", "smear", "deception" and "misrepresentation", Ms McKenna and Dublin North Central TD Mr Finian McGrath (Ind) told the Galway meeting.
An opinion article published in last Friday's Irish Times was an example of this, Ms McKenna claimed. The author, Mr John Bergin, had described himself as co-ordinator of the Green Party Supporters for Europe, yet he was not a member and no one in the party knew of him, she said.
Similarly, a group campaigning for a Yes vote on behalf of parents with disability had not consulted with the main disability groups, Mr McGrath told the meeting. "I have no problem with individuals and groups taking particular sides, but I do not approve of attempts to fool the public."
Many people campaigning against the treaty were not as "narrow minded" as they were being portrayed, Mr McGrath said. Nor was the vote about EU membership or economic co-operation. A Yes vote would increase the powers of larger member-states, and the EU would no longer be a partnership of equals.
The Seville Declaration on Ireland's neutrality was not legally binding, and Irish troops could be drawn into an EU Rapid Reaction Force which would operate "offensively".
Ms McKenna said the Referendum Commission had turned the debate into a propaganda campaign for the Yes side, while IBEC, the employers' organisation, was running a Yes campaign which was being funded by semi-State bodies. This amounted to Government funding for one side by the back door, and represented an abuse of public funds.
It was incorrect to claim that Ireland had the only Green Party in Europe which was against the treaty when the Greens in France, Britain and Sweden were also opposed to it. Nice would create a two-tier Europe - a "gold circle club and an economy class". Members of civil society in the applicant countries for the EU were aware of this, and were in favour of enlargement but were not in favour of the treaty.
The Fine Gael MEP for Connacht-Ulster, Mr Joe McCartin, has accused Sinn Féin of leading a "confused No coalition of variable geometry and two-faced thinking" on Europe.
He made his comments as two wings of the "republican" movement and the Green Party signed up to a new umbrella organisation opposing the nice treaty in Connemara. Sinn Féin and Republican Sinn Féin have dropped their differences to work with the Green Party in Co Galway on campaigning against the treaty.
The group includes Mr Sean Ó Coisteabhla, a Sinn Féin candidate in the last election in Galway West, Mr Diarmuid Ó Maolchatha of the Green Party, Mr Tomás Ó Curraoin of Republican Sinn Féin, and Mr Seosamh Ó Cuaigan, elected independent member of Údarás na Gaeltachta, the development authority.
