Sir, - If anyone still has any doubt, your report (May 25th), proves that the democratic deficit with which the European Union is riddled, is also thriving in Ireland.
You report that Government Ministers are planning to amend the Constitution as it affects referenda, in the wake of the McKenna judgment, as it is "unsatisfactory that spurious arguments have to be put forward in the interests of balance".
This is, at best, an astonishingly arrogant position for any Government to adopt, and at worst, a gross violation of the absolute right, in a supposed democracy, for all valid opinion to be placed before voters, no matter how unpopular those views may be to politicians..
It is particularly disgraceful when one considers the very real concerns which now exist on further European political integration. It is the considered view of many people that the only "spurious arguments"' emanate from the politicians. The Government's behaviour is close to that of a Third World tin-pot dictatorship and insults the electorate.
The No vote to Amsterdam by almost 40 per cent of the electorate cannot be dismissed conveniently as some kind of a protest vote. Neither should the Government be allowed to change the Constitution to make it easy for them to quash future opposition.
If there isn't an EU law to prevent them doing so, there ought to be. - Yours, etc., David Woodcock,
Drumlish, Co Longford.