Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I am aware of the general issue that Deputy Gilmore raised and there is a need for all broadcasting companies, including public broadcasting companies, to exercise their remit with care and to ensure that the public airwaves are not used for the promulgation of false assertions or for abdicating from the process of informing the public as to what exactly it is about and not about. Unfortunately, what has emerged because of the interpretation of the McKenna judgment is that in certain respects one sees a premium on confusion rather than clarity emerging from debates and that does not serve a purpose.

If there are two sets of opinions or views, let them be put frankly and on the basis of what is in the treaty rather than have people stating as fact things that are not in the treaty at all. One of the great benefits of the exercise in which the Oireachtas and Government have been engaged in recent months has been to bring a greater degree of clarity to the concerns and the ability to accommodate those concerns in a way that in legal terms is of equal status to anything already in the treaty. Therefore, it appears to me to be a logical interpretation of the situation to say the issues that were raised as having been dealt with deficiently have now been dealt with by reason of the additional clarifications and confirmations given by way of a decision of the European Council, which has legal effect, and the political undertaking to transpose that into a protocol of a subsequent treaty.

The question of those clarifications having a status that is some way inferior to what is already in the treaty, which some people argued, does not arise. Therefore, it is important - I will bring this to the attention of the Minister for Foreign Affairs as representative of the Government side - to work co-operatively with other party organisations to see in what way we can ensure that a coherent and cogent position is put. In terms of the public debate, it is an important factor in any referendum campaign that the campaign is conducted in way which adds light rather than heat to the issue.

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