Madam, – Roger Cole, chairman of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance (Pana), has drawn attention to the support of Intel Ireland for the Lisbon Treaty, and raised the prospect of companies “coming here and spending a vast amount of money advocating a Yes vote”. (“Referendum spending limits urged”, August 26th)
Strangely, neither Mr Cole nor his comrades seem to show any compunction about the use of private corporate wealth to advocate a No vote.
During the first referendum campaign, Pana did not utter a word of criticism in respect of the estimated €1.3 million spent by Libertas and Mr Declan Ganley in this regard. Efforts by your newspaper to ascertain the source of this funding or the motivation behind the campaign were dismissed by the No campaign as smear tactics.
Mr Cole is also perturbed by the fact that Intel Ireland produces components which “have a military application”. This would also be an accurate description of Mr Ganley’s various business enterprises, and yet this did not prompt Mr Cole to question Mr Ganley’s motivations at any time during the last referendum campaign.
Mr Cole seems to be trying to have his cake and eat it. – Yours, etc,
A chara, – Patsy McGarry (Opinion, August 21st) sneers at the range of organisations which, sometimes for differing and sometimes for overlapping reasons, oppose the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland.
Would Mr McGarry prefer if we were on the same side as the bankers and the financial institutions – those fine upstanding gentlemen who would march us into their new Europe with the same alacrity as they marched us into this present overwhelming financial crisis?
Or perhaps Mr McGarry would prefer if we aligned ourselves with all the pro-Lisbon builders and land speculators who now need a €90 billion Nama bailout that will impoverish both ourselves and our children.
Maybe Mr McGarry thinks we should be international? Does he propose we align ourselves with the pro-Lisbon European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) with their privatisation agenda that makes Maggie Thatcher look like a wet Liberal? Or maybe Mr McGarry would be happier if we aligned ourselves with the generals, the arms manufacturers and arms exporters all of whom are fervently pro-Lisbon.
Mr McGarry seems particularly worked up by anti-Lisbon campaigners calling the treaty “profoundly undemocratic” and calls as his defence that “it has already been approved by 85 per cent of directly-elected representatives across the EU”. Indeed, but more pertinently it has also been rejected by 55 per cent of the Irish voters and we were the only country allowed to vote on its contents.
Mr McGarry also seems to suggest that Joe Higgins’s visit to Cuba disallows him speak on democracy. I thought Mr McGarry would know that a visit to Cuba puts Joe Higgins in the same elevated company as Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin TD, the late Pope John Paul II, and many of the present leadership of the Labour Party.
If Mr McGarry wishes to read the Lisbon Treaty and acquaint himself with the facts then I or anyone else on the No side would be fully prepared to have an open debate with him. In the meantime it would be most edifying if he desisted from undergraduate-type desk thumping. – Is mise,
Madam, – In response to both Sinn Féin Senator Pearse Doherty’s recent call for an “honest and mature” debate, and Paul Williams’s call for more arguments “backed up by reference to the treaty” (August 26th), I have put the entire consolidated text of the Lisbon treaty up on our website (www.generationyes.ie/lisbon-treaty) and you will note that every argument in our Lisbon treaty guide makes reference to the exact article in that text.
What I would like to see is this being done on more websites, so that every Irish citizen can more effectively and fruitfully access what is actually in the treaty, and decide for themselves.
Let’s have this debate; we owe it to the country. – Yours, etc,