Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

In any case, they have taken the currency.

A second reason is that a wide-ranging debate inside and outside the House would cause an upheaval among Green Party members. Those Greens who had faithfully followed Deputies Sargent and Gormley and the former MEP, Ms Patricia McKenna, in their idealistic tilt at the European windmill on six previous occasions might not be happy to find that two of their Don Quixotes were done with tilting at windmills, although Donna Quixote still has her tilting lance ready for the fray. The Greens U-turn is complete and the fewer questions, the better at this stage, especially with a potentially divisive referendum ratification campaign on the horizon for a party hierarchy which has jettisoned all its EU policies and mutated from Eurosceptic to Europhile.

For the Labour Party, the major treaty provision is that concerning the Charter of Fundamental Rights which is given legally binding force in the treaty. The charter was drawn up in 2000 by a convention which had much greater democratic representation than the standard Intergovernmental Conference process. Consequently, the content of the charter is far more broadly based than the valuable 1950 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, ECHR, which was incorporated into Irish law in 2003.

The charter draws on the previous European social charters produced by the European Union and the Council of Europe. While the ECHR is restricted to civil and political rights, the Charter of Fundamental Rights extends to other areas such as the right to proper administration, social and economic rights, bioethics and the protection of personal data. The comprehensive list of rights falls under the headings of dignity, freedoms, equality, solidarity, citizens rights and justice. All of these areas of human existence and human endeavour are incorporated into the charter, making it one of the most extensive and succinct statements of human rights and citizens' entitlements ever to be given legal force.

While, unfortunately, the British Government decided to opt out of the charter's provisions, the Irish Government, despite an initial opt-out to examine the implications of the British decision, is now fully supportive——

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