Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to come back to the issue of sovereignty and constitutionality. As I said, I believe what the Minister is doing is constitutional - we voted for it - but I disagree with the point made that we are not ceding a certain amount of sovereignty. Going back to those treaties, specifically the Lisbon treaty, the option was there to opt in, but the Minister may remember also that we have an option on corporation tax and on setting our tax rates. We could give that up tomorrow. We have the option to do that. If we did that, we would be ceding sovereignty over that particular piece of decision-making. If we do the same here, we will pool our decision-making, our sovereignty. It is not whether that is a good or a bad thing. I am not making that argument; it is for somebody else to make. I did not read this on any blog or anywhere else. I canvassed for the Lisbon treaty twice. I sat down and went through it very thoroughly so I have some idea of what was at stake. In my head at least, there is a definite issue here about pooling our sovereignty, which, in reality, means ceding a certain amount. Again, may I have the Minister's view on that? It is fundamentally different from what Deputy Alan Farrell said. He spoke about trade, but when we signed up to the EU treaties in the first place, trade was part of the EU competence. That was what we signed up for. At that point, we pooled our sovereignty. We are now pooling our sovereignty in another area.