Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)

To draw on one of the points made by the Minister of State at the June Council meeting and the legal guarantees which were agreed by the 27 member states on that occasion, I have read much literature in recent weeks, particularly a leaflet distributed to every home in the country by the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group, which is ultimately the UK Independence Party and the pro-Commonwealth anti-European grouping in the European Parliament. It states these legal guarantees are not worth the paper on which they are written. Will the Minister of State clarify the legal status of those guarantees and precisely how they are legally binding?

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