Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein)

In March 2011, the Government framed itself as an Administration with the mandate of a democratic revolution. This mandate was to sweep away the corrupt, undemocratic, wasteful, greedy and negligent political practices of the past and usher in a new era of better Government. This claim was not based on the Government's belief that it really had better ideas or different politics but merely that it could do Fianna Fáil's job a little better and that people would see it as new and refreshing.

It has certainly not done away with the age old tactic of scaremongering to ram through policy. In the first and second Lisbon treaty referendums, respectively, we saw how over the top and how effective this can be. We were told that to vote "No" to these treaties was to vote to leave the EU, destroy our economy further, put everyone in the country on the dole and cast out onto a sea of uncertainty from which we would never return. We were warned that ATMs would shut down and cash would cease to be. This was nonsense and scaremongering and it is happening all over again.

Of course, we have a new Government and so we have new scaremongering tactics. This time it is in the treaty itself, in the form of the European Stability Mechanism and the blackmail clause. The clause states that access to future emergency funding from the European Stability Mechanism would be conditional on ratification of the austerity treaty. The Government supported its insertion, raising not one single objection. This clause would mean people would be making their decision, not on whether the treaty would help to solve the economic crisis across Europe but on whether they believed the scare tactics and propagators of doom on the Government benches. It would be a vote under a manufactured duress. None of this has to be done, but it is the route chosen by the Government as a tactic to coerce people into supporting the treaty. It would not have stopped the crisis and will certainly not fix it.

Some democratic revolution we have had, when this is what the Government thinks it can do to us. It is nothing less than treachery. The Government can do something that would be in the interests of Ireland, of democracy and of the wider Europe. It can delay the ratification of the ESM Bill and of Article 136 until after the referendum on the austerity treaty. Ireland needs an honest debate on this treaty and on the enshrining of austerity as the only policy available in crisis. The Government, if it is a government of the people, must stand by the people's decision on this treaty and seek to inform rather than coerce. If a "No" vote is returned in the referendum, the Government must return to the European Council and seek the removal of the blackmail clause from the ESM treaty. If the Council refuses to change the treaty, the Government must use its veto to block the passage of the treaty.

This treaty will heap further austerity on all of us, and on other European countries, and will further erode plans to take back our economic sovereignty. It will increase the prospect of our losing our economic sovereignty.

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