Sir, – In his piece criticising the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta), Michael McDowell says that the Green Party “successfully resisted inclusion of Ceta ratification in the programme for government” (“Fine Gael should bow its head in shame over EU-Canada trade deal”, Opinion & Analysis, November 16th).
This is not entirely correct.
The programme for government commits all three parties to “support new and existing EU trade deals to expand Ireland’s export options into new markets”.
Given that Ceta was signed between the EU and Canada in 2016 and has effectively been in force since October 2017 – almost three years before the current government was formed - nobody in the Green Party could have been in any doubt about what this commitment was referring to.
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This vague language was clearly included as part of a tried and tested Green Party tactic of abandoning a core manifesto commitment while maintaining a fig-leaf to allow some of their self-anointed “true believers” to later engage in some performative opposition to policies which they willingly signed up to.
Michael McDowell is correct when he says that the arbitration provisions of Ceta represent an extraordinary assault on the authority of the Irish courts, but there is simply no doubt that Green Party TDs cynically signed up to its ratification as the price of entering Government. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.