Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

It is right that the Dáil is spending considerable time debating this Bill, which seeks to amend the Constitution to give effect to the Lisbon treaty. No doubt the Government and its allies in this House will cite the succession of TDs who have stood up to advocate a "Yes" vote but it is important we recognise that the arguments of those of us who take the opposite view are no less important.

Successive referenda have shown that people have been ill-served by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour, who have unquestioningly and uncritically supported every proposed development of the European Union that has been put to referendum in this State. Yet consistently over one third of the electorate has opposed the further loss of sovereignty and the undermining of neutrality. That section of opinion grew to defeat the first Nice referendum in 2001.

Now the number of voters who find themselves unrepresented or not properly represented in this House has increased. Very many of those who voted for the Green Party, on the basis that they would oppose further erosion of Irish sovereignty and neutrality, find that their party has swung around to support the Lisbon treaty, not on its merits but so the party can remain in government with Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats.

Government speakers have repeatedly cited the positions we have taken in previous referenda and say that we are not to be trusted when we state that we are for continued EU membership, that co-operation with our EU partners is valuable and must continue and that we have supported EU measures that have benefited this country. However, these are the positions of Sinn Féin. We are positive about Europe, we are for critical engagement with the European Union and too many in this House are for unquestioning loyalty to EU institutions.

It is interesting to hear them refer to previous referenda. There was no referendum between the referendum on EU accession in 1972 and the referendum on the Singe European Act in 1987. The gap was a full 15 years and if successive Governments, involving Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour, had had their way there would have been no referenda at all after accession. The people were only given the right to decide on these issues after a private citizen, the late Mr. Raymond Crotty, took court action on constitutional grounds. It is interesting to consider how far the political elite in this State would have taken us if they had not been held to account in this way. For one thing, I very much doubt that we would have remained outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO.

In his speech introducing this Bill the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, said:

There is currently no proposal for a common EU defence. In any case, a change in Ireland's position can only come about if the Irish people decide so in a referendum.

Again we have the touching reference to a referendum. The Minister's party, Fianna Fáil, in its 1997 election manifesto, opposed membership of NATO's so-called Partnership for Peace. That was the first general election that saw Deputy Bertie Ahern elected Taoiseach. Deputy Bertie Ahern said that to join it without a referendum would be a "serious breach of faith and fundamentally undemocratic". In government he joined it and there was no referendum.

This State has come to play an increasingly significant role in both NATO and EU military structures. Irish troops serve at NATO headquarters in Brussels under the so-called Partnership for Peace. Irish troops have served in NATO-led missions, including in Afghanistan. There is a full-time EU military staff, EUMS, headquartered in Brussels that is responsible for command and control of EU military capabilities. This reports to an EU military committee which, in turn, reports to the EU Political and Security Committee and from thence upwards to the EU Council of Ministers. Irish Army officers serve with the EUMS and Ireland is represented at all other levels of this network. This Lisbon treaty will deepen involvement with NATO, ensuring that all such activities are compatible with NATO, while increasing Irish taxpayers' contributions to Irish and EU military capabilities.

Government speaker after Government speaker, as well as others on the "Yes" side, have repeatedly tried to promote the scare story that a rejection of Lisbon will see us turned into the dunces of the EU class who will be put standing in the corner or, worse still, expelled altogether. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, and the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dick Roche, have specialised in this line. Deputy Martin Mansergh tried to recruit every Irish patriot from Eoghan Rua Ó Neill to Thomas Davis and the men and women of 1916 to the "Yes" campaign. All this was to show that by voting "No" we would be turning our backs on Europe and the world. It is patent and patronising nonsense and it convinces no one.

France and the Netherlands rejected the EU constitution in 2005. They did not lose influence or standing in the European Union and nor would this State if it did likewise. The purpose of a referendum is for the citizens of a member state to freely and democratically decide on the matter at hand. As democrats we must all, including our EU partners, respect the outcome of the referendum. Attempts to bully or bribe us into voting a particular way are undemocratic. There is no doubt that, if rejected, this treaty will reopen the debate about the future of Europe.

The attempts by the political elite in Ireland and in Brussels to deceive the people have gone well beyond rhetoric here in the Dáil and I want to detail some of it. In October 2007 the European Parliament Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs was due to produce a report on a common consolidated corporate tax base. There were many in the Parliament who wanted the Commission to bring forward its proposal. At the co-ordinators' meeting Mr. Eoin Ryan, MEP, of Fianna Fáil intervened to request that it be postponed until after the referendum here in Ireland. Representatives of the political blocs to which Labour, Fine Gael and Marian Harkin are affiliated all agreed to postpone it. Again, this report will not now be discussed until after the Irish referendum.

In December 2007, European Commission President, Mr. José Manuel Barroso, removed tax harmonisation from the strategic objectives of the Commission for 2008. It was widely reported in both the Irish and European media that Irish Commissioner, Mr. Charlie McCreevy, campaigned for this change as he believed that the plans for the tax base would become an issue in the debate on the treaty referendum. Following this decision, László Kovács, Commissioner for Taxation and Customs Union, told MEPs that same month that a legislative proposal for a common tax base would still be published but not until after the 2008 summer break — after the Irish referendum.

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