Sir, - I intend to vote "no" in the next referendum if there is any reneging on Ireland's responsibility to our EU partners in the area of defence. I firmly believe in the European vision, but I reject sponger membership.
The passionate intensity of the ragbag coalition of the Christian far right and the old leftist ex-Connolly Youth cannot be allowed to sell the big lie. Obscure lecturers and wild-eyed minor politicians have been lifted from their obscurity and made into national figures by media forced into spurious "balance".
The Nice Treaty does not have any effect on our neutrality, which is not under threat by our previous agreement to provide one infantry battalion ready to deploy under UN mandate in order to prevent another Bosnian-type horror. The original engine of the EU was the desire of former enemies to ensure peace for their children. All partners in this great European drive for peace are now contributing to the European Rapid Reaction Force in accordance with their national wealth. The only change is the time factor.
Up to now we have had to wait while Europe burned, playing "green" political games, eventually begging help from Uncle Sam and sending a hastily organised ad-hoc military force, with a creaky attempt at unity of command, into the smoking ruins of some despairing village. Now we will have troops, under warning orders, prepared to move before the first innocent European is murdered.
The Nice referendum fell, to our shame, for two main reasons:
(1) The abstention of the Taoiseach, presumably on advice to "cosy up" to the intellectually insulting Sinn FΘin/IRA "anti-militarists", with Ministers feeling free accordingly to undermine "Government policy".
(2) The malign legacy of the McKenna judgment in the Referendum Commission. As well as literally incredible TV ads, it produced childishly "balanced" lists in two equal print spaces of arguments, each of which would need paragraphs, if not pages, to clarify the concepts involved, without in any way helping voters to judge the worth or truth of any.
An indication of hope for the future, however, is the Government's decision to take over the maintenance of the Island of Ireland Peace Park with the authorities in Northern Ireland (Denis Staunton, June 20th). This is a recognition of Ireland's honourable contribution to Europe in the past and of the indivisibility of the Irish military tradition, shared by nationalists and unionists, a bridge to the Ireland of the new millennium.
Irish troops of both political traditions have been on the same side on UN service. In any future European trouble spot they could again be shoulder to shoulder, as the 16th and 36th Divisions were at Messines. Ladybird, national-school history, mixed with bile, as offered by people like Mr Pβdraig ╙ Cuanachain (An Irishman's Diary, June 22nd) will not prevail. He traduced as a traitor John Redmond, a great and honourable Irishman, who pleaded for a voluntary acceptance as a nation of our international responsibilities as part of a constitutional peace process. - Yours, etc.,
P.D. Goggin, Glenageary Woods, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.