Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

Based on answers to previous questions and on the Government's general commitment to a new republic, constitutional conventions and more open and accountable politics, one would imagine this means a political system that is more responsive to the popular will on key issues confronting the Government. Given the Taoiseach has committed the Government to supporting a treaty, which is not an EU treaty but an intergovernmental treaty, which will lock this country into crippling austerity for at least ten years and which will give this intergovernmental body the right to intrude on our budgetary process and to impose conditions on the ability of governments to frame budgets which will in the words of the treaty be "permanent and binding", thereby locking governments into them, it is difficult for me to understand how that is not worthy of a referendum. It is probably the most far-reaching treaty with the most profound impact on the citizens of the country and the Government's ability to exercise economic sovereignty in the State, so how can the Government think-----

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