Sir, – Two of the three bail-out countries, Greece and Portugal, have hastened to ratify the stability treaty in the expectation that they will benefit from being in good standing. Our No campaigners would have us believe the direct opposite, that popular rejection here on May 31st will enable us to obtain at least equivalent, if not better, terms from our partners and from one or more of the IMF, EU or ECB, with no treaty strings attached.
Do they really think that is how European financial diplomacy works?
The Canadian finance minister Jim Flaherty, who heads up the regional constituency of the World Bank of which Ireland is a member, and who is a good friend of this country, has already as much as warned us that the IMF is not there to bail out single-handed relatively wealthy Western European countries, who have fallen out with the EU, when it has responsibilities to far poorer countries.
More Eurosceptic British government members might like to welcome Ireland back to the sterling area. Is that the form of Irish unity some opponents of the treaty would unwittingly steer us towards in 2016? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Arthur Beesley writes: “Any country that fails to ratify the fiscal treaty by next March will not be entitled to aid from the permanent European Stability Mechanism” (“No avoiding the hefty price of an Irish rejection of fiscal treaty”, May 3rd),
That is a misreading of the ESM treaty; the March 1st, 2013 date in its preamble is not a deadline for a country to ratify the fiscal treaty if it ever wants to be eligible for ESM assistance, but instead the cutoff date for a country to be eligible for ESM assistance without having ratified the fiscal treaty.
Under the terms of the ESM treaty Ireland could in fact defer ratification of the fiscal treaty until such time as it became certain that it would need assistance from the ESM, and that other ESM members were not prepared to waive that belatedly inserted precondition.
Therefore, even if the result of the present referendum is No, Ireland could still subsequently qualify for ESM aid on the back of a Yes in a second referendum. – Yours, etc,