Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein)

One does not hear voices claiming the treaty will solve the eurozone crisis. While experts disagree on what needs to be done, many of them are singing from the same hymn sheet in arguing that the treaty does not provide a solution. It will bring further austerity, cuts, regressive taxation, unemployment and emigration because it will deepen the current recession. It will also handicap the ability of governments to invest in job creation and job creation facilitation. It represents more of the same failed policies that saw a second bailout for Greece only this week.

Many speakers referred to the European Stability Mechanism, ESM. The link between the mechanism and treaty arose from the Government's failure to stand up for Ireland in negotiations. Irish negotiating energy was spent by and large on trying - in vain - to avoid a referendum by adding the formula "preferably constitutional" to the text of the treaty. If the Government has any fight left in it, it should veto the decision to link the ESM to the austerity treaty. A veto is available in respect of the treaty change on which the bailout fund is based. As Senators are aware, the ESM will be the European Union's emergency funding mechanism from mid-2012. It is based on the ESM treaty which has not yet been ratified. Ratification is dependent on the ratification of an amendment to Article 136 of the EU treaties. While the Government cannot block the ratification of the ESM treaty, it has a veto over the ratification of the amendment to the treaties. The ratification is dependent on the ratification of an amendment to Article 136 of the EU treaties. While the Government cannot block the ratification of the ESM treaty, it has a veto over the ratification of the amendment to Article 136 of the European treaties, which will come before the Houses of the Oireachtas shortly in the form of the European communities (amendment) Bill. The constitutionality of passing this new treaty through the Oireachtas could be open to question.

The link between ratification of the austerity treaty or future access to ESM funds was supported by the Government in February of this year. It could have blocked it at that time but it chose not to do so. We now call on the Government to do the right thing and insist this clause is removed from the ESM treaty and the fiscal compact treaty. It has a veto on the issue and it must exercise it. Furthermore, the idea that the EU will allow a eurozone country to sink if it refuses to sign up to this is preposterous. We are linked by the same currency, we are part of the same market and it would not be in anybody's interest to let one country sink.

This new intergovernmental EU treaty smacks of having been made up as they went along in terms of decision making. It seems we have thrown out the rule book, the old tested methods of doing things and adopted a rushed and legally very questionable way of doing things now. It is ill-thought out and it is very unlikely that it will ever work. It is stripping us furthermore of some of our sovereign competencies and forcing us into more austerity.

As previous speakers have said, this treaty is nothing like what we have been asked to ratify previously and there is nothing progressive in it. No sector of civil society could read this document and say that it will bring progress and more equality to Irish society. Senator Byrne mentioned the six pack of proposals and the discussions leading up to those. As Proinsias De Rossa, the former MEP, said, after he and his social democratic colleagues rejected the core of this six pack of measures in September in the European Parliament:

[T]he Labour Group in the European Parliament opposed four of the so-called '6-Pack' because they are economically misguided. Austerity measures which fail to protect investment, will kill growth, destroy jobs and derail economic recovery. Without growth a return to sound public finances will be simply impossible [...] There is a clear alternative to brute austerity.

As the SIPTU boss, Jack O'Connor said:

The Fiscal Compact agreed by 25 EU governments is the worst imaginable response to the challenge of recession and stagnation. The Agreement, which seeks to enforce strict budget discipline across Europe, will have a far reaching effect on people's lives across the EU by reducing pension provision, cutting public services, eroding people's rights at work and driving down the cost of labour.

There is not one article in this treaty that can be thought of in any way as being of benefit to social justice, the environment, women's and children's rights, young people or to any progressive sector of society. It is purely an economic treaty and the economics contained in it are bad, right wing and will not work. That is why we call on civil society and trade unions, in particular, to back up their rhetoric and stand up against this treaty. It is too important to keep quiet about. Civil society and workers must organise and campaign against it. There is no justification for any other response and no other action should be considered except to reject outright this treaty.