Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

On behalf of the Labour Party, I support the establishment of the sub-committee. It is important we begin a debate on the situation in the aftermath of the rejection of the Lisbon treaty referendum in terms of our future within the European Union. This debate must involve all political parties from across the political spectrum. However, much more is required. All of society must become involved in the debate and it must be genuinely reflective. I am concerned there may be a view that we can merely go through the motions, secure some minor changes and present essentially the same proposal to the public with the claim that it is a different proposition. It would be taking a big gamble and while it could work, it might not. If we adopt that type of approach we will only add to the cynicism about domestic and European politics. There have been thorough polls about why people voted the way they did on the Lisbon treaty. The Government commissioned a poll, which reported in September, and the Eurobarometer poll was conducted by the EU. In addition, there have been many different newspaper polls. The message from these polls as reported in the media is that there were two critical issues. It has been said that the main single reason for voting "No" or for abstaining was the absence of an adequate knowledge of the issues involved. Second, despite the "No" vote victory, a substantial majority of "No" voters shared one thing in common with "Yes" voters, which is that they believed Ireland's interests are best served by remaining fully involved in the EU. There are important lessons to be learned from highlighting those two issues, but one cannot just take the matter at face value. Polls cannot be absolutely substantiated in terms of finding why a person made a particular decision. As a local politician who tried to sell the "Yes" vote in the Lisbon treaty campaign, I still believe there was a fundamental fear among the public that we might be ceding too much power to the EU, although they might not have known exactly how. That is related to the fact that people said their main reason for voting "No" was the absence of adequate knowledge of the issues involved. It is not just that they decided they did not know enough about this matter and therefore voted "No"; underpinning that decision was their fear that by signing up to the Lisbon treaty we might be ceding too much power to Europe. That issue must be dealt with in terms of our post-Lisbon response and what we do next.

People had fears about our neutrality and what would happen after the treaty, which links to the democratic deficit issue. There are people who think that an ever-increasing European Union is the way to go, while others such as myself, and many who voted "Yes" or "No", may ask where exactly we want to draw the line in terms of our co-operation at EU level and how much power we want to cede to Europe. They were not just concerned about the Lisbon treaty, they were also concerned about future treaties. A number of people said they wanted to draw the line at some stage. They were not sure on which side of the line they stood with regard to the Lisbon referendum and therefore did not want to take any risks. That was quite a noble way to look at things. Some people say the public were not informed and ask how could they have done this irresponsible thing, but I do not agree with that. They acted the way voters always do, exercising complicated judgments. They may not have known exactly what was in the treaty, and neither did Charlie McCreevy, but they had a complicated view of the sovereignty issue and how much power we exercise domestically and at EU level.

As a society we need to decide how much power we wish to exercise here at home — we need to be very clear about that — and how much power we are prepared to cede at EU level. Another part of it is how much power we would like to exercise at local government level. All the indications are that those are the issues. People were concerned about the impact of the treaty on fishermen, bogs and neutrality. There was a multiplicity of issues and the public had a complicated view of them. We need to have a debate about the democratic process, including what decisions we think should be made here, which ones should be made at EU level and why we think so. Other commentators have said that also. The way people voted did not only concern the EU's democratic deficit, it also had to do with the democratic deficit in Ireland. Many things that go on in this House would fuel that perception. There is the question of how much power is exercised by the Oireachtas. Sometimes it seems as if we are just rubber-stamping matters, debates are curtailed and for many months the House is not sitting so the Opposition cannot hold the Government to account. Decisions are taken outside the House concerning partnership agreements and briefings at EU and other levels that have nothing do with a democratic debate on how we should organise our society. I hope this new committee will start that type of debate, which will then move out into society at large. If we do not do so, we will be setting up problems for the next Lisbon treaty or for the future generally and we will make people more cynical about politics.

Awareness is part of the problem but it is not enough to educate people about what is in the Lisbon treaty. The matter is much more complicated than that and involves decisions, debate and dialogue on what we wish to happen at the EU and domestic levels. We need to educate ourselves, not to mention the public, about how things operate with regard to neutrality. Many people had concerns about what the Lisbon treaty or future European Union treaties would mean for Ireland's neutrality. They wanted to know if our sons and daughters would be sent to take part in wars abroad. Until I entered the Oireachtas, initially as a Senator, I never knew anything about the triple-lock mechanism. I had never heard of it before becoming a Member of the Oireachtas. If I did not know about it as a county councillor how can we expect the public to know about it? We need to explain what happens concerning any decision on whether or not to participate in a military mission.

While the new committee is welcome, it will not stop here. It comprises politicians but it should not involve going through the motions just so we can say we have done a few things to fix it before going to the public again. We must have proper debate and dialogue.

See this speech in context