Sir, – I have been listening to sundry academics, trade unionists and politicians of various hues telling me and my fellow citizens that we should vote No to the fiscal treaty.
Most of these are part of a privileged elite and would be cushioned from the worst consequences of their advice, ie the possibility that we could be shut out from some sources of international funding.
They keep repeating the mantra that austerity is not working and we should spend. They fail to tell us where we will get the money.
They also fail to remind us that it was just such a lack of responsibility that has the country bankrupt and that has us in need of maintaining all our options. The last thing we are in need of now is more of the same. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – The constitutional amendment for the Lisbon Treaty made numerous references to our membership of the EU. It also referred to the EU’s authority to pass laws alongside other competent bodies under the Lisbon and related treaties.
The proposed amendment for the fiscal compact makes no mention of EU or prior treaties and indicates that unspecified “bodies competent” can pass laws or measures for Ireland. This prompts questions as to whether the fiscal compact should be viewed as an EU or international treaty and whether these bodies competent might be the same ones that are driving the EU into a depression by insisting that austerity is the only way forward.
It is extraordinary that Ireland eventually agreed to the Lisbon Treaty in a second referendum partly because we were promised a permanent Irish commissioner. Yet today, the entire European Commission seems to have been pushed aside by banking and political forces, and we are being urged in the current referendum to deliver key aspects of our Constitution and lawmaking not to the EU but into the hands of an international treaty led by so-called bodies competent where our influence is likely to be minimal by comparison with the commission. – Yours, etc,