The Spire

Concern at Saudi school plan

2009-12-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

Concerns have been raised at plans by the Government of Saudi Arabia to establish a school with an Islamic ethos in Dublin, according to the Irish Times. The plans have been announced in Arabic on the website of the Saudi embassy in Dublin which opened in September. From the Irish Times on Wednesday:

"According to the notice, the decision to set up a school was taken at a meeting in Dublin late last month. The meeting was attended by members of the education committee of the Saudi Shura Council, an unelected body whose members advise the Kingdom’s government, and Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Ireland, Abdulaziz Aldriss.

“It was decided in the meeting to establish a Saudi school to teach the children of Saudi citizens and students residing in Ireland,” the website says.

The Saudi embassy insists the plans are at a very early stage, and a spokesperson yesterday declined to give further details. In a statement, the Department of Education said the Saudi government had not been in contact with the department regarding the matter.

Speculation has mounted within Ireland’s 40,000-strong Muslim community over how big the school might be, and whether it will cater for non-Saudi Muslims.

According to the embassy, less than 15 Saudi families live and work in Ireland, and more than 400 Saudi nationals study here, though the latter number is expected to rise in coming years following the Saudi ministry for education’s recognition of more Irish third-level institutions.

Ali Selim, a theologian based at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Clonskeagh, Dublin, welcomed the plans. Asked about speculation within the Muslim community that the school may incorporate secondary education, he said that if this proved correct it would “achieve a long cherished Muslim ambition” in Ireland.

The plans were welcomed by the parents of Shekinah Egan, the teenage girl whose request to wear the hijab at her school in Gorey, Co Wexford, last year prompted the principal to call for official guidelines to be issued on the wearing of the hijab in State schools. Ms Egan’s father, Liam, who lived with his family for several years in Saudi Arabia, praised what he described as the Kingdom’s “strong commitment” to education both domestically and overseas.“An Islamic secondary school is vital and should be a priority for the community,” he said".

The news will raise concern on a number of fronts. Following 911, the Saudi government came under pressure from the Bush administration to remove alleged incitement to hatred against Jews and Christians from school textbooks. A 2004 Saudi royal study group found that the kingdom's religious studies curriculum "encourages violence toward others, and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the 'other.' " Since then, the Saudi government has claimed repeatedly that it has revised its educational texts. The former Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, lauded the supposed moderation of the revised textbooks/ But as the Washington Post reported in 2006, Saudi textbooks continue to villify non-Muslims - even referring to Christians and Jews as "apes" and "swine". The quotes below are derived from a 74-page review of the supposedly sanitised Saudi curriculum distributed by the Saudi Embassy in Washington:

FIRST GRADE

" Every religion other than Islam is false."

"Fill in the blanks with the appropriate words (Islam, hellfire): Every religion other than ______________ is false. Whoever dies outside of Islam enters ____________."

FOURTH GRADE

"True belief means . . . that you hate the polytheists and infidels but do not treat them unjustly."

FIFTH GRADE

"Whoever obeys the Prophet and accepts the oneness of God cannot maintain a loyal friendship with those who oppose God and His Prophet, even if they are his closest relatives."

"It is forbidden for a Muslim to be a loyal friend to someone who does not believe in God and His Prophet, or someone who fights the religion of Islam."

"A Muslim, even if he lives far away, is your brother in religion. Someone who opposes God, even if he is your brother by family tie, is your enemy in religion."

SIXTH GRADE

"Just as Muslims were successful in the past when they came together in a sincere endeavor to evict the Christian crusaders from Palestine, so will the Arabs and Muslims emerge victorious, God willing, against the Jews and their allies if they stand together and fight a true jihad for God, for this is within God's power."

EIGHTH GRADE

"As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus."

"God told His Prophet, Muhammad, about the Jews, who learned from parts of God's book [the Torah and the Gospels] that God alone is worthy of worship. Despite this, they espouse falsehood through idol-worship, soothsaying, and sorcery. In doing so, they obey the devil. They prefer the people of falsehood to the people of the truth out of envy and hostility. This earns them condemnation and is a warning to us not to do as they did."
"They are the Jews, whom God has cursed and with whom He is so angry that He will never again be satisfied [with them]."
"Some of the people of the Sabbath were punished by being turned into apes and swine. Some of them were made to worship the devil, and not God, through consecration, sacrifice, prayer, appeals for help, and other types of worship. Some of the Jews worship the devil. Likewise, some members of this nation worship the devil, and not God."
"Activity: The student writes a composition on the danger of imitating the infidels."

NINTH GRADE
"The clash between this [Muslim] community (umma) and the Jews and Christians has endured, and it will continue as long as God wills."
"It is part of God's wisdom that the struggle between the Muslim and the Jews should continue until the hour [of judgment]."

"Muslims will triumph because they are right. He who is right is always victorious, even if most people are against him."

TENTH GRADE
The 10th-grade text on jurisprudence teaches that life for non-Muslims (as well as women, and, by implication, slaves) is worth a fraction of that of a "free Muslim male." Blood money is retribution paid to the victim or the victim's heirs for murder or injury:
"Blood money for a free infidel. [Its quantity] is half of the blood money for a male Muslim, whether or not he is 'of the book' or not 'of the book' (such as a pagan, Zoroastrian, etc.).
"Blood money for a woman: Half of the blood money for a man, in accordance with his religion. The blood money for a Muslim woman is half of the blood money for a male Muslim, and the blood money for an infidel woman is half of the blood money for a male infidel."

ELEVENTH GRADE
"The greeting 'Peace be upon you' is specifically for believers. It cannot be said to others."
"If one comes to a place where there is a mixture of Muslims and infidels, one should offer a greeting intended for the Muslims."
"Do not yield to them [Christians and Jews] on a narrow road out of honor and respect."

TWELFTH GRADE
"Jihad in the path of God -- which consists of battling against unbelief, oppression, injustice, and those who perpetrate it -- is the summit of Islam. This religion arose through jihad and through jihad was its banner raised high. It is one of the noblest acts, which brings one closer to God, and one of the most magnificent acts of obedience to God."

We must ask - as a society - if we are prepared to allow the promotion of hatred of non-Muslims (referred to as Dhimmis in Sharia law), women and homosexuals into our education system ? We cannot have two-standards - one for Catholicism's role in our education-system and another for that of Islam. If - as Fintan O'Toole claims in the Irish Times - "agents of foreign state should not control our schools" - then that equally ought to apply with respect to the Kingdom's attempts to export its borderline interpretation of Islam into our Repubic. Taking account of the horrors of the Ryan and Murphy reports exposing decades of rampant abuse of Irish children at the hands of the Catholic Church, as well as the rampant incitement to hatred promoted in the Saudi education-system, it is difficult for an objective person to come to any other conclusion than that it is time for the dangerous-liason between religion and education to come to an end. In the context of an increasingly multi-ethnic and multi-faith Ireland, the continued segregation of children on the basis of religion - which increasingly constitutes a de-facto segregation on the basis of nationality - must come to an end. The taxpayer and the State have no stake in perpetuating division, , anti-semitism and anti-Westernism in this Western, Christian country. I speak as an atheist - but one who recognises the comparative tolerance of Christian culture relative to much of the Muslim world - notably with respect to the rights of women and homosexuals. Tolerance is a two-way street.

In particular, this issue is another moment of truth for the Irish Left, many of whom have campaigned tirelessly for the rights of persons historically disenfranchised or downtrodden in Irish society - such as women and gay people. They face an inherent contradiction between their belief in "multiculturalism" (which promotes diversity for its own sake) on the one hand - and the rights of those who would lose those rights if the Saudi system of Sharia Law were to be introduced into this country. It is impossible to separate an education system from the culture it supports. If we allow the seed of Saudi Wahhabism to be sown in our schools, we can wave goodbye to women's rights, gay rights, and freedom of religion as the political system of Saudi Arabia shows. That country outlaws homosexuality and conversion of Muslims to another faith on punishment of death. Premarital-sex is punishable by up to 100 lashes, with adultery punishable by stoning to death. If the Irish Left mean what they say when they call for a more pluralist Ireland, then here is their opportunity to prove it. They should oppose the establishment of this school - and all schools which undermine the cohesion and mutual respect upon which pluralism and tolerance depends.

Czech President: I won't sign Lisbon

2009-10-12T16:06:00.000-07:00

The Czech PM, Jan Fischer, appears to have backed down in his struggle with President Vaclav Klaus over ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. President Klaus has refused to sign the Treaty since it was ratified by both houses of the Czech Parliament last May. Asked during a walkabout on Sunday not to put his name to the treaty, Mr Klaus replied: “Don’t worry, I won’t.” The Treaty must be ratified in all EU member states in order to come into force. After a crisis Cabinet meeting yesterday, Jan Fischer, the Czech Prime Minister, avoided a direct confrontation with Mr Klaus, bowing to his demand (last Friday) to reopen negotiations with the EU on an eleventh-hour opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights.Klaus argues that the Charter could be used by ethnic-Germans to regain their property lost in the expulsions following the Benes Decrees after World War Two, which expelled 2.6 million ethnic-Germans from former Czechoslovakia:

"After a crisis Cabinet meeting yesterday, Jan Fischer, the Czech Prime Minister, avoided a direct confrontation with Mr Klaus, bowing to his demand to reopen negotiations with the EU on an eleventh-hour opt-out. However, he called on the unpredictable President to guarantee his signature if EU leaders agreed to his conditions and if the Czech Constitutional Court raised no new objections.Mr Klaus is demanding an opt-out for the Czech Republic that would prevent German families expelled after the Second World War from lodging property claims at the European Court of Justice.He raised the stakes on Friday, putting a dampener on EU celebrations over the Irish referendum decision to back the treaty. The President argued that the charter could whip up an avalanche of property claims from German families expelled from Czech territory after the war".

The Irish option of ‘guarantees’ outside of the Treaty appears insufficient for Klaus:

"Mr Klaus appears to have rejected the easier path of negotiating guarantees on interpretation of the charter, in a syle similar to the guarantees secured by the Irish government on an interpretation of the treaty in politically sensitive areas.
Ladislav Jakl, the Czech president’s spokesperson told the Irish Times that “this [Irish way] seems to me as an absolutely impossible way forward”. “The president will not be satisfied by any declaration, but only guarantees for every citizen. For him, this condition is fundamental, necessary, unbreachable”.

Bulgaria and France have today reacted angrily to the delay:

"Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said here Monday after talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy that a refusal by the Czech Republic’s leader to ratify the EU Lisbon Treaty would not be tolerated, AFP informed.
“It must not be allowed, it must not be tolerated. President Sarkozy is of the same opinion,” Borisov said when asked about the Czechs being the last holdout in ratifying the European Union’s reform treaty.
According to the office of the French president, during their talks Sarkozy noted that the 27-nation bloc had targeted for the Lisbon Treaty to take effect by the end of this year.
“Therefore, we cannot imagine that a member state would be responsible for trampling on its commitment,” it said.
The Czech Republic also runs the risk of not having a commissioner on the next European Commission, the EU executive arm, it added".

EU leaders are anxious to secure Czech ratification to prevent an incoming Tory Government in the UK reversing British ratification and putting Lisbon to a referendum, where polls indicate the Treaty would almost certainly be rejected. The UK General Election must take place by June 2010 at the latest. Conservative Party leader David Cameron has promised a referendum if elected prior to the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty by ratification in every member state. However, asked what his course of action would be if it is already in force by that date, he has only stated he would “not let matters rest there”.

Why there won't be an Election

2009-10-07T19:51:00.000-07:00

With the impending Green conference on the Programme for Government on Saturday, much speculation surrounds the fate of the Government and the possibility of an early General Election perhaps within weeks. Such speculation is ill-informed, and smacks either of wishful thinking, ignorance of the Constitution, or both. I predict with near-certainty that there will be no General Election, on the basis of Article 13.2.2, which states:

"The President may in his absolute discretion refuse to dissolve Dáil Éireann on the advice of a Taoiseach who has ceased to retain the support of a majority in Dáil Éireann".

In that context, Cowen could lose a confidence-motion in Dail Eireann and Enda Kenny could be elected Taoiseach by virtue of the Greens crossing the floor and support from Sinn Féin. But Green support would surely depend on Enda Kenny agreeing not to seek a dissolution of Dail (and in practice a General Election) from the President. This is at the heart of the ignorance about the prospect of an early election – the role of the President and An Taoiseach. To start the train running, An Taoiseach must request a dissolution of Dail Eireann from the President of Ireland. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas and consequently, Cowen certainly won’t request it. Likewise, neither will the Greens allow Kenny to. And even if Kenny requested a dissolution of Dail Eireann, the Greens would deprive him of his hypothetical majority, allowing President McAleese to refuse a dissolution. After all, she is a Fianna Fáiler at heart.

Lisbon: Germans bully Czech Court

2009-10-01T14:32:00.000-07:00

The German Ambassador to the Czech Republic exerted pressure on the Czech Chief Justice on ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, according to Czech Newspaper "Euro". Two weeks before 17 Senators filed a new complaint against the constitutionality of the Treaty before the court, the German Ambassador to the Czech Republic, Johannes Haindl reportedly pressed Czech Constitutional Court Chairman Pavel Rychetsky to dismiss the challenge so that Czech ratification of the Lisbon treaty can proceed. The newspaper reports that he got what he wanted:

"Rychetský had reportedly promised the German ambassador rapid settlement of the contract".

Czech Senators involved in the challenge reacted angrily to the revelations, accusing Germany of outside-interference and of undermining the independence of the judiciary.:

(Senator Petr Pakosta)

"If it be true, it's scandalous. Would mean that Mr. Rychetský our promise to reject a complaint when he did not know how the new complaint looks. Also considers it strange that the Czech Constitutional Court refers to the German ambassador about our ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. It too does not indicate the independence of our Constitutional Court and non-interference in our affairs abroad."

(Senator George Oberfalzer):

"Yes, I heard about it...The President of the Constitutional Court informed the ambassador about the current hot topics Czech constitutional jurisprudence, and exchanged remarks on the review under the Lisbon Treaty with the constitutional order in both countries. Accentuated was the inspiration of the German Constitutional Court decisions, and differences relating to the review of international agreements in the Czech Republic".

If true, the report underlines the democratic-deficit at the heart of Europe. The separation of politics from the judiciary is a cornerstone of Western democracy, which is under attack from the European Union with respect to the Lisbon Treaty. In recent days, UK Conservative leader David Cameron restated his intention to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty if it remains unratified by all 27 EU member states if and when the Tories come to power next year:

(David Cameron, Tory leader)

"If this treaty is still alive, if it is still being discussed and debated anywhere in Europe, then we will give you that referendum, we will name the date during the election campaign, we'll hold that referendum straight away and I will lead the campaign for a no,"

Were Ireland to ratify the Treaty, Cameron's hopes of preventing it coming into force would rest on the non-completion of the Czech ratification-process.

Odey: I'm not funding Irish "No" campaign

2009-09-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

The UK hedge-fund manager Crispin Odey, who an Irish Independent article claimed had “bankrolled” “Declan Ganley’s ‘No to Lisbon Campaign’, has rejected claims by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan that he is funding the Libertas “no” campaign. In a fax to RTE and TV3 dated 30th September 2009 and seen by me, Mr Odey demanded that the broadcasters issue clarifications to this effect by 12 noon today. The faxes state that:

"1. I have never contributed to to any political campaigns in Ireland conducted by Mr Declan Ganley or any other group.

2. I contributed a sum of money in May this year to the campaign of a British citizen who was standing as a candidate for Pro-Democracy Libertas UK in the European elections because she is a personal friend of mine.

Please confirm by fax by 12 noon today that you have published a clarification of any inaccuracies that may have arisen by reason of any broadcast or publication by yourselves."

The faxes are reproduced below:

Reject Lisbon 2 next Friday

2009-09-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

Seven days from now the fate of the Irish nation will have been determined. This generation will determine whether the independence won because of the sacrifice of the men and women of 1916 will have been but an interlude in Irish history, or whether 1916's vision of a small nation, cooperating with its European and international partners, will endure. Is Ireland to be returned to the colonial domination generations fought to end? Are we to betray not only the men and women of 1916-21 and the dead generations - but also the courageous peoples of France and the Netherlands - who themselves have experienced the oppression that comes with foreign rule - who stood shoulder to shoulder with us in rejecting the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty blueprint? That is the fundamental question facing the Irish people on Friday 2nd October. Here are my reasons for voting no:

1. Worker's Rights: Lisbon exacerbates the race to the bottom and promotes the exploitation of migrant labour - with all that implies for workers in host societies - to drive down pay and conditions. Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union as amended by Lisbon enshrines the Charter of Fundamental Rights into EU law on a level-footing with the Treaties. Furthermore, under the proposed Article 29.4.6 of the Irish Constitution (Paragraph 6 of the 28th Amendment to the Constitution Bill), EU law overrides national law and even the Irish Constitution. This means that the Charter will override the Irish Constitution and Irish law. The argument that Article 29.4.10 of the Constitution already makes EU law supreme over national law misses the point - namely, that as the scope of EU law increases with successive treaties, the effective meaning of such terminology changes, as the Irish Constitution is further eroded as ever more decisions can be taken in new areas that render the Constitution null and void, to all intents and purposes.

28th Amendment to the Constitution Bill Paragraph 6:

No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State, before, on or after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, that are necessitated by the obligations of membership of the European Union referred to in subsection 5° of this section or of the European Atomic Energy Community, or prevents laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by—
i the said European Union or the European Atomic Energy Community, or by institutions thereof,
ii the European Communities or European Union existing immediately before the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, or by institutions thereof, or
iii bodies competent under the treaties referred to in this section, from having the force of law in the State.

For the first time we are being asked to make the Charter of Fundamental Rights part of EU law, meaning that it will override the Irish Constitution. Article 15(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights appears to force Ireland to allow asylum-seekers to work. The fact that the UK has an optout from the Charter creates the prospect of Ireland and Malta being the only English-speaking EU countries to allow asylum seekers to work. That can only result in another large influx of cheap labour, and their exploitation at the hands of unscrupulous employers - themselves often the benefactors of politicians:

Article 6 TEU:

The Union recognises the rights, freedoms and principles set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union of 7 December 2000, as adapted at Strasbourg, on 12 December 2007, which shall have the same legal value as the Treaties.

Article 15(1) -Charter of Fundamental Rights:

Everyone has the right to engage in work and to pursue a freely chosen or accepted occupation.

Furthermore, Article's 18 and 19 of the Charter appear to give the ECJ jurisdiction over asylum and immigration policy, notably the ban on "collective expulsions" in the latter:

Article 18 (Charter of Fundamental Rights):

The right to asylum shall be guaranteed with due respect for the rules of the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 and the Protocol of 31 January 1967 relating to the status of refugees and in accordance with the Treaty establishing the European Community.

Article 19 (Charter of Fundamental Rights):

1. Collective expulsions are prohibited.

2. No one may be removed, expelled or extradited to a State where there is a serious risk that he or she would be subjected to the death penalty, torture or other inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The political-elites argue that we have an optout from the common immigration policy by virtue of Protocol 21 on the Position of the UK and Ireland with respect to the European Area of Justice and Freedom. This ignores the fact that Paragraph 7 of the referendum-wording (proposed Article 29.4.7. of the Irish Constitution) clearly authorises the Government and the Oireachtas to abolish that optout Protocol:

28th Amendment to the Constitution Bill 2009, Paragraph 7:

The State may exercise the options or discretions—
i to which Article 20 of the Treaty on European Union relating to enhanced cooperation applies,
ii under Protocol No. 19 on the Schengen acquis integrated into the framework of the European Union annexed to that treaty and to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (formerly known as the Treaty establishing the European Community), and
iii under Protocol No. 21 on the position of the United Kingdom and Ireland in respect of the area of freedom, security and justice, so annexed, including the option that the said Protocol No. 21 shall, in whole or in part, cease to apply to the State, but any such exercise shall be subject to the prior approval of both
Houses of the Oireachtas.

We already have JHA optouts stemming from the Amsterdam Treaty. What is changing is that by voting "yes", we will be authorising the Oireachtas and the Government to abolish it. Indeed both FF and FG have indicated a desire to do so. Then Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern announced last year that the Government would "review" the optout within three years, and optin in unspecified areas. On her blog on April 1st 2009, FG Deputy European Affairs spokesperson Lucinda Creighton called for the Protocol to be abolished:

Dermot Ahern, former Minister for Foreign Affairs:

The Reform Treaty will also give full legal status to the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The Government has definitively resolved not to associate ourselves with a British Protocol on the Charter of Fundamental Rights. We see the Charter as an important statement of the Union’s values and are completely committed to it...We intend, in particular, to opt into future police cooperation measures. The aim is to retain our strong commitment to EU cooperation while giving ourselves options whenever our particular legal traditions may be called into question in an EU context. This in no way undermines our determination to press for effective EU action against serious cross border crime.

Lucinda Creighton (01 April 2009):

I urge the Taoiseach to reconsider the matter of justice and home affairs. This is too important for Ireland to opt out of and we must acknowledge that a mistake was made with that Cabinet decision. I hope it will be reconsidered in the context of the forthcoming Lisbon treaty referendum.

The Government's own commissioned research by Millward-Browne revealed workers-rights to be the biggest factor in the "No" vote. They have not been adequately addressed. All the Government has to show in this respect after almost a year-and-a-half of shuttle-diplomacy are two, non-binding statements from the European Council and the Irish Government stating that both attach "high importance" to workers' rights. That will come as news to the workers in the Laval/Viking cases, whose side the ECJ chose not to take with respect to the displacement of workers in Finland and Sweden by Latvian workers. In the Viking judgement, the ECJ referenced Article 28 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, noting how it limits to the right to collective-bargaining. This provides us with a reality-check in contrast to the "Yes" side's tall-tales of the Charter as the pill for every ill in terms of workers' rights. In reality, it is a Charter of Bosses Rights, to facilitate the race to the bottom. It is, to put it simply, a Trojan Horse by political and corporate elites intent on undermining pay and conditions:Article 28 - Charter of Fundamental Rights:

Workers and employers, or their respective organisations, have, in accordance with Union law and national laws and practices, the right to negotiate and conclude collective agreements at the appropriate levels and, in cases of conflicts of interest, to take collective action to defend their interests, including strike action.

2. Democracy: Then there is the question of democracy. The French and Dutch peoples have already rejected 95% of these provisions by rejecting the discredited EU Constitution. A succession of pro-Lisbon elites have acknowledged publicly that the Constitution and the Treaty are basically the same in institutional terms. The removal of references to flag/anthem cannot erase that reality:

President Sarkozy of France, The Daily Telegraph, 14th November 2007:

A referendum now would bring Europe into danger. There will be no treaty if we had a referendum in France, which would again be followed by a referendum in the UK.

Dr Garret FitzGerald, former Taoiseach, Irish Times, 30 June 2007:

As for the changes now proposed to be made to the constitutional treaty, most are presentational changes that have no practical effect. They have simply been designed to enable certain heads of government to sell to their people the idea of ratification by parliamentary action rather than by referendum.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark, in Jyllands-Posten, 25th June 2007:

The good thing is that all the symbolic elements are gone, and that which really matters - the core - is left.

Bertie Ahern, former Taoiseach, Irish Independent, 24th June 2007:

They haven't changed the substance - 90 per cent of it is still there.

Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, speech to the European Parliament, 27th June 2007:

The substance of the constitution is preserved. That is a fact.

On those grounds alone, the Treaty could be condemned as anti-democratic. The French and Dutch peoples have not been asked a second time for their verdict on the Lisbon Treaty. Some on the yes side have sought to portray the election of President Sarkozy in 2007 as a vote for Lisbon. Yet Sarkozy only proposed a "mini-treaty". He never told his people it would be 95% the same as the rejected EU Constitution, or 10,000 words longer. A mini-treaty? Dutch polls continue to reject Lisbon by over 60% of the vote. If we vote for Lisbon, we are effectively consigning the self-determination of those nations to history. In doing so, we would be betraying not only those 2 nations, but also our own history of fighting for 700 years for self-determination. How can we deny to others what we sought for so long for ourselves?

The much-vaunted 'powers for national parliaments' and the Citizens' Initiative are also something of a joke. Under the Protocol on the Application of the Principles of Subsidiarity and Proportionality, each national parliament will have 2 votes in a sort of electoral-college. If one-third (25% in the case of certain aspects of Justice and Home Affairs) of all the votes of national parliaments (9 parliaments at present) agrees, they can object to draft EU legislation on the basis that it fails to meet the requirement of subsidiarity. The Commission is not obliged to review the draft legislation - though it "may" do so (bless 'em). If a majority of national parliaments makes such an objection, only then is the Commission obliged to review the legislation - but they are not bound to amend or withdraw the proposal. The so-called 'red-card' is that 55% of the Council or a majority of the European Parliament can force the proposal to be withdrawn by the Commission. But this too is worthless because, were opposition to the legislation so widespread, it would stand no chance of passing into EU law in any case. A blocking-minority under Qualified Majority Voting is 4 states including over 35% of the EU's population. Similarly, the Citizens Initiative (Article 11 TEU) can only propose legislation - it cannot force the EU to so legislate. A poor compensation for the removal of 50 areas of national sovereignty to Brussels through the loss of the veto:

Article 11 TEU:

4. Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties.

3. Bogus 'guarantees': At a pro-Lisbon rally last Thursday night, European Affairs Minister Dick Roche attempted to compare the status of the 'guarantees' to that of the Good Friday Agreement saying:"The European Council in June last took a legally binding Decision addressing the Concerns of the Irish People on the Treaty of Lisbon. That Decision and the guarantees will be lodged with the United Nations under Article 102 of the UN Charter...In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement was also lodged with the UN under Article 102 of the UN Charter."

This argument conveniently ignores the fact that the Good Friday Agreement was immaterial to the constitutional structures of the European Union, unlike the Lisbon 'guarantees'. Furthermore, in what might be regarded as a test case for the 'international-agreement' thesis, the ECJ last year effectively declared that EU law superseded international law where a conflict arose:

an international agreement cannot affect the allocation of powers fixed by the Treaties or, consequently, the autonomy of the Community legal system.

While that ruling related to the annulment of EU regulations concerning the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1267 on freezing the assets of the AL-Qaida linked Al Barakaat International Foundation, it has clear implications for the Irish ‘guarantees’ because on September 3rd 2008, the ECJ effectively declared that EU law supersedes the UN. Remember – if the ECJ won’t even respect UNSC Resolutions – the highest instrument of international-law – then what chance they will respect the infinitely weaker contents of the ‘guarantees’, which we are told in any case is going to be an “international agreement” – and the ECJ – as quoted above – has made clear what it thinks of those. Comparisons with the Good Friday Agreement are bogus because it does not claim to “clarify” any aspect of the EU treaties. It is not material to the EU, and therefore not material to the Lisbon debate, despite erroneous attempts by figures like Dick Roche and Pat Cox to claim the contrary.

In any case, the Swedish Prime Minister let the cat out of the bag with an Irish Times interview with Jamie Smyth on 5th September 2009 where he acknowledged that in effect, all countries could retain a Commissioner without Lisbon via a "26+1" arrangement. This would see the 27th country receiving the position of High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, effectively replacing the External Relations Commissioner post.

Mr Reinfeldt said a “26 plus one option” was probably the best solution, whereby 26 states retain their commissioner and the 27th state is offered the post of high representative for foreign affairs instead. This would give all 27 countries a top EU job, while complying with the legal condition for an EU executive of less than 27 members, which is stipulated in the Nice treaty.

4. Loss of sovereignty:The Lisbon Treaty also transfers 50 areas of national sovereignty to Brussels via the expansion of Qualified Majority Voting to those areas. Those not subject to Irish optouts include: Freedom of movement for workers, social security benefits, Agreement for the withdrawal of a Member State, Energy, Arrangements for the implementation by the Union of the solidarity clause in case of terrorist attack or natural disaster, Implementing measures for the system of own resource. But that is only part of the story. By far the most disturbing element of the erosion of the veto are the implications for Irish sovereignty of the surrender of the Justice and Home Affairs. What is changing with this referendum is that - for the first time - we are being asked to insert into our Constitution wording that would allow the Government and Oireachtas to abolish those vetoes, by abolishing the optout Protocol contained in the Lisbon Treaty. There is something terribly ironic about being told there is an optout while being asked to vote to allow the Government to abolish it. Some will argue that the invocation of those provisions depends on the configuration of parties in office at the time. But as explained above, Dermot Ahern announced a review of the optout within 3 years, while on April 1st 2009, Lucinda Creighton called for the Protocol's outright abolition. Should the Protocol be abolished, that would mean sensitive areas of Justice Policy, including Border checks, Asylum and Immigration, Incentive measures in the field of crime prevention, the powers of Europol and Eurojust, Judicial cooperation in criminal matters and harmonisation of legislation on criminal matters, offences and sanctions. If it is not the Government's intention to remove the optout, then why include in the referendum wording a specific power for the Oireachtas and Government to do just that?

As far as I am concerned there is no smoke without fire. It should be noted that under the Amsterdam Treaty (which came into force in 1999), Ireland already has the right to optout/in of common policies in the areas of asylum and immigration, civil-law and border-controls. What is changing is that we are being asked to entrust the politicians with the power to abolish even the right to optout on Justice and Home Affairs in future by surrendering Protocol 21. One way or another, if you approve the amendment before us next Friday, Ireland will find itself reduced to having a pathetic 0.8% say in policies on Justice and Home Affairs, and the ECJ will become a Federal Supreme Court with the full range of provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in this area as its window to interfere in our affairs with respect to Justice policy, especially in the areas of asylum and immigration.

Disturbingly for the Irish economy, Article 207 of the TFEU as amended by Lisbon clearly abolishes the veto on commercial-policy, and it becomes an exclusive competence of the EU. That will endanger efforts by the IDA to attract investment to Ireland - a particular cause of concern in the light of the fact that the European Commission has just approved €55 million in state-aid for the relocation of Dell jobs from Ireland to Poland. We cannot - particularly in these recessionary times - afford to risk FDI in Ireland. Despite the economic downturn, FDI has held up well in the recession.

Article 207 TFEU

1. The common commercial policy shall be based on uniform principles, particularly with regard to changes in tariff rates, the conclusion of tariff and trade agreements relating to trade in goods and services, and the commercial aspects of intellectual property, foreign direct investment, the achievement of uniformity in measures of liberalisation, export policy and measures to protect trade such as those to be taken in the event of dumping or subsidies. The common commercial policy shall be conducted in the context of the principles and objectives of the Union's external action.
2.The European Parliament and the Council, acting by means of regulations in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, shall adopt the measures defining the framework for implementing the common commercial policy.
3. Where agreements with one or more third countries or international organisations need to be negotiated and concluded, Article 218 shall apply, subject to the special provisions of this Article.
The Commission shall make recommendations to the Council, which shall authorise it to open the necessary negotiations. The Council and the Commission shall be responsible for ensuring that the agreements negotiated are compatible with internal Union policies and rules. The Commission shall conduct these negotiations in consultation with a special committee appointed by the Council to assist the Commission in this task and within the framework of such directives as the Council may issue to it. The Commission shall report regularly to the special committee and to the European Parliament on the progress of negotiations.
4. For the negotiation and conclusion of the agreements referred to in paragraph 3, the Council shall act by a qualified majority.For the negotiation and conclusion of agreements in the fields of trade in services and the commercial aspects of intellectual property, as well as foreign direct investment, the Council shall act unanimously where such agreements include provisions for which unanimity is required for the adoption of internal rules.
The Council shall also act unanimously for the negotiation and conclusion of agreements:
(a) in the field of trade in cultural and audiovisual services, where these agreements risk prejudicing the Union's cultural and linguistic diversity;
(b) in the field of trade in social, education and health services, where these agreements risk seriously disturbing the national organisation of such services and prejudicing the responsibility of Member States to deliver them.
5. The negotiation and conclusion of international agreements in the field of transport shall be subject to Title VI of Part Three and to Article 218.
6. The exercise of the competences conferred by this Article in the field of the common commercial policy shall not affect the delimitation of competences between the Union and the Member States, and shall not lead to harmonisation of legislative or regulatory provisions of the Member States in so far as the Treaties exclude such harmonisation

This means that the veto on WTO agreements is gone, except where agreements on FDI "include provisions for which unanimity is required for the adoption of internal rules or where agreements "would threathen the EU's "cultural and linguistic diversity", or where agreements in the areas of social, health and education policy would "risk seriously disturbing the national organisation of such services and prejudicing the responsibility of Member States to deliver them.", Such criteria are subjective. Article 207 endangers the livelihood Irish farmers with respect to competition from cheap imports, notably of Brazilian beef, despite concerns about its safety. The latest EU commission Food and Veterinary Office Report found that half of all holdings inspected failed to meet EU requirements on the important issues of registration, traceability and movement controls.

5. Taxation:Article 311 of the TFEU as amended by Lisbon authorises the European Council to establish a "system of own resources of the Union", and to "abolish an existing category" and create new ones. This sounds to me suspiciously like empowering the Council to impose Europe-wide taxation:

Article 311 TFEU (as amended):

The Union shall provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives and carry through its policies.
Without prejudice to other revenue, the budget shall be financed wholly from own resources.
The Council, acting in accordance with a special legislative procedure, shall unanimously and after consulting the European Parliament adopt a decision laying down the provisions relating to the system of own resources of the Union. In this context it may establish new categories of own resources or abolish an existing category. That decision shall not enter into force until it is approved by the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. The Council, acting by means of regulations in accordance with a special legislative procedure, shall lay down implementing measures for the Union's own resources system in so far as this is provided for in the decision adopted on the basis of the third paragraph. The Council shall act after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

Article 113 of the TFEU as amended by Lisbon also contains measures for the harmonisation of taxation, to "avoid distortions of competition". While theoretically, Ireland has a veto, in practice this new objective could be used by the European Commission to take Ireland to the ECJ for a breach of internal-market rules outlawing Ireland's 12.5% corporate-tax as such a "distortion of competition. I would also contend that Tax Commissioner Laslo Kovacs plan for CCCTB (destination-taxes on exports payable to the country of destination) would be on firmer legal-ground if challenged by Ireland in the ECJ, as he could argue it is needed to combat the "distortion of competition" created by our corporate-tax rate.

Article 113 TFEU:

The Council shall, acting unanimously in accordance with a special legislative procedure and after consulting the European Parliament and the Economic and Social Committee, adopt provisions for the harmonisation of legislation concerning turnover taxes, excise duties and other forms of indirect taxation to the extent that such harmonisation is necessary to ensure the establishment and the functioning of the internal market and to avoid distortion of competition.

Commissioner Kovacs has claimed he has enough support to invoke Enhanced-Cooperation (requiring the support of 8 countries and the consent of the Commission) to push CCCTB through without unanimity. This is not a time to be endangering the tax-sovereignty of this troubled country.

At the end of the day, it is the 28th Amendment to the Constitution that we are voting on, and a longterm perspective is needed. The elites that pushed the Act of Union through the Irish Parliament promised, among other things, Catholic Emancipation. That we waited 29 years afterwards before it was granted, and that we endured a catastrophic famine, ought to act as a warning of what can become of small nations that relinquish their sovereignty. It is a lesson we should have learned by now. For 20 years after joining what is now the European Union, this country continued to export its people and suffer mass-unemployment. Most no voters favour EU membership, but are sufficiently clued-in to recognise it is not a panacea (as the Swiss economy demonstrates) and that Boston contributed at least as much to our eventual prosperity as Berlin. I call on the Irish people to reject the Lisbon Treaty. Do not cede longterm sovereignty, won at an enormous cost by the dead of 1916 and seven centuries before, because of phantom myths and fairy-godmothers of economic recovery concoted by the our political, media and in some cases union-elites. Remember Adam Smith's old adage:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

Ganley returns to fight Lisbon 2

2009-09-10T16:22:00.001-07:00

In a dramatic development, Declan Ganley has announced he is to campaign against Lisbon 2. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Ganley argues that the second referendum not only insults the Irish people, but also the French and Dutch who rejected the controversial treaty’s predecessor, the EU Constitution: "It’s profoundly undemocratic to walk all over democracy. . . The Irish people had a vote on the Lisbon Treaty. They voted no. A higher percentage of the electorate voted no than voted for Barack Obama in the United States of America. No one’s suggesting he should run for re-election next month. But—hey, presto!—15 months later we’re being told to vote again on exactly the same treaty.” He taps the table for emphasis: “Not one comma has changed in the document". Asked for evidence the two treaties are the same, he again cites the architect of the EU Constitution, former President of the Convention on the Future of Europe Valery Giscard d’Estaing: "Well, first of all, the people who drafted the European Constitution say it is. Like [former French President Valéry] Giscard d’Estaing. He called it the same document in a different envelope. And having chaired the presidium that drafted the Constitution, he would know…He also said in respect of the Lisbon Treaty that public opinion would be led to adopt, without knowing it, policies that we would never dare to present to them directly. All of the earlier proposals for the new Constitution will be in the new text, the Lisbon Treaty, but will be hidden or disguised in some way. That’s what he said. And he’s absolutely right. There is no law that could be made under the European Constitution that cannot be made under the Lisbon Treaty. None".

Asked by the interviewer why should 1.5 million Irish voters get the opportunity to hold back the progress of 500 million citizens of Europe? Ganley argues that rather than thwarting the will of hundreds of millions of fellow Europeans, Ireland has a duty to them to uphold the results of those earlier votes. Approving the treaty would be a betrayal of those in France and the Netherlands—not to mention the millions of others who were never offered a vote on the Constitution or Lisbon. "Millions of people in France, a majority, voted No to this European Constitution. In the Netherlands, millions of people did exactly the same thing. When the Irish were asked the same question, they voted no also. Those three times that it was presented to an electorate, the people voted no…Why..when the French voted no, the Dutch voted no and the Irish voted no, are we still being force-fed the same formula? You don’t have to scratch your head and wonder about democracy in some intellectualized, distant way and wonder, is there some obscure threat to it". Inevitably, the discussion turned the economy. Was Ganley putting his country at risk by calling for a No vote? He responds that that the only people threatened by a no vote are: "these elites in Brussels, The only people we risk annoying are a bunch of unelected bureaucrats and what I call this tyranny of mediocrity that we have across Europe…the Irish have never been afraid throughout history of asking the tough questions and standing up for freedom and what was right against much, much bigger opponents. In fact, we seem to revel in it". With the no campaign derided in the press as an alliance of Far Left and Far Right, the re-emergence of Libertas as a force in the Lisbon potentially puts the middle-classes, which voted pro-Lisbon last time back in play for the no-camp, and will come as an unwelcome distraction in the wake of a large falloff in support in the latest TNS-MRBI Lisbon poll. The battle is joined, and the outcome is all to play for.

Lisbon: Dismantling our immigration-controls

2009-09-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

It's the elephant in the room that the elites do not want to discuss. While on the opposite side of the spectrum to Cóir on some moral issues, they are to be commended for bringing the immigration issue into the debate in terms of Lisbon's contribution to the race to the bottom through mass-immigration. It is unfortunate that the rest of the no campaign seem unwilling to do so. The elites won't discuss it in public, but I am firmly of the view that this has the potential to win this contest for the "no's". A string of prominent pro-Lisbon party TD's stated that immigration played a major role in the first no, and I believe it will in the second. So who is it connected to Lisbon? It is connected to Lisbon largely because of the provisions of the referendum-legislation, but also because of those of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Under Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union (Maastricht as amended by Amsterdam and Nice) as amended by the Lisbon Treaty, the provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights have "the same legal-value as the Treaties". Under the proposed Article 29.4.6 of the Irish Constitution., that means they will override the Irish Constitution. It states: "6° No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State, before, on or after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, that are necessitated by the obligations of membership of the European Union referred to in subsection 5° of this section or of the European Atomic Energy Community, or prevents laws enacted, acts done or measures
adopted by—i the said European Union or the European Atomic Energy Community, or institutions thereof, ii the European Communities or European Union existing immediately before the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, or institutions thereof, or iii bodies competent under the treaties referred to in this section,from having the force of law in the State." The usual retort to this argument from the pro-Lisbon side is to the effect that an overriding provision for EU legislation and decisions has existed since we joined the then EEC in 1973. While this is true, the context has entirely changed. For the first time, a massive codification of human-rights is coming under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. They - not the Irish Supreme Court - will decide what it means. As the competences of the EU have grown over the last 36 years, the Irish Constitution has become more and more undermined, because new policy areas are subjected to QMV (Qualified Majority Voting) on the Council of Ministers. That inevitably means an increase in the throughput of legislation/decisions from Brussels, which means more opportunities for the Irish Constitution to become null and void. Yet until Lisbon, the basic question of human rights has remained overwhelmingly a matter for the Irish Supreme Court to adjudicate upon. No more with Lisbon and the Charter, which will give the ECJ the final say on those issues. Specifically, Article 15.1 legalises work for asylum seekers, stating: "1. Everyone has the right to engage in work and to pursue a freely chosen or accepted occupation.". The problem is that the UK has an optout Protocol from the Charter, meaning that Ireland and Malta would become the only English-speaking countries in the EU allowing asylum-seekers to work. Likewise, Article 19.1 of the Charter states that "1. Collective expulsions are prohibited". This will inevitably mean that Irish deportation-orders will be challenged in the ECJ, notably where they involve asylum-seekers who arrive in the country with children or have them while they are here. So in effect, if we vote yes, we are voting to create a new baby-tourism loophole for asylum, whereby asylum-seekers - as before the Citizenship Referendum in 2004 - have children here to prevent their deportations. With asylum costing the taxpayer €300 million per annum, and with the average judicial-review prolonging the asylum-appeals process by 21 months, this is the last thing the hard-pressed Irish taxpayer, social-welfare system, health-service, overcrowded schools and 420,000 unemployed need. We are effectively borrowing to pay for bogus asylum seekers as over 90% of asylum-seekers fail in their applications.

Besides the Charter, the Lisbon referendum's process of dismantling our immigration controls also feeds into the text of the constitutional amendment we are voting on next month. The 28th Amendment to the Constitution Bill 2009 contains the wording of the amendment we are being asked to insert into the Constitution. Paragraph 7, which will become Article 29.4.7. if we vote yes, states the following: "7° The State may exercise the options or discretions—i to which Article 20 of the Treaty on European Union relating to enhanced cooperation applies, ii under Protocol No. 19 on the Schengen acquis integrated into the framework of the European Union annexed to that treaty and to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (formerly known as the Treaty establishing the European Community), and iii under Protocol No. 21 on the position of the United Kingdom and Ireland in respect of the area of freedom, security and justice, so annexed, including the option that the said Protocol No. 21 shall, in whole or in part, cease to apply to the State, but any such exercise shall be subject to the prior approval of both Houses of the Oireachtas.". So Paragraph 7(ii) empowers the Government, with the consent of the Oireachtas (which is a given in any event) to take Ireland into the passport-free travel area known as the Schengen Area. This would abolish passport-checks on travellers into Ireland from the 25 countries party to the Schengen Agreement. Furthermore, Paragraph 7(iii) would allow the Government to abolish -the optout Protocol, present since the 1999 Amsterdam Treaty, that has allowed successive Irish governments to optin/out of common policies in the field of Justice and Home Affairs, including asylum and immigration, policing, and the powers of the pan-European police-body known as Europol. In that context, it was ironic some days ago listening to Fine Gael's deputy spokesman on European Affairs, Lucinda Creighton, claim on RTE's Drivetime radio programme that Lisbon will help in the fight against people-trafficking. The reality is that by legalising employment for illegal-immigrants, the Treaty further incentivises people trafficking, by ensuring that the fatcats who are exploiting illegal migrant-labour can do so legally. Furthermore, the abolition of passport controls and document-checks for immigration into Ireland for travellers through the 25 country Schengen Area will inevitably cause a huge increase in the numbers trafficked into the country. It may be that Schengen membership - as well as opening the floodgates from that area - will force us to establish controls on the border with Northern Ireland. But if one door is to be closed somewhat, it is certain that the establishment of what amounts to a Common Travel Area with 25 other countries will more than cancel out any gains in the fight against people-trafficking consequent on joining Schengen. The reality is that Lisbon is part of the race to the bottom by the rich and powerful elites against the Irish working man and woman. The agenda is clear: to legalise illegal immigrant labour and to make it easier to traffick them into Ireland. That is what Lisbon is about, and is another important reason to vote No on October 2nd.

We must stop the Lisbon Treaty.

2009-08-14T18:08:00.001-07:00

Lisbon 2 and the the fall of the Republic once more threaten. Art is imitating life, but it is a grotesque constitutional form of modern art, devoid of inspiration, and in that respect rather akin to the "light goes on - the light goes off" school of artistic mediocrity. We are once more being forced to choose what we are told is the least worst option, which, according to the elites, is the Lisbon Treaty. Maybe we are about to choose the least worst option. But that is a no vote - rather than a vote to consign the Republic and the freedom so many sacrificed their lives for - to history. The Republic is in danger. Now as never before since 1921 has the call of the patriot dead for its defence rang so loudly in the ears of the Irish people. Freedom is under siege from powerful elites, determined to foist their will upon unwilling nations such as the French and Dutch (who rejected the EU Constitution), and many others who would - had they been offered the opportunity to decide by direct popular vote - have joined the former in throwing out this Treaty. The recent Bastille Day celebrations in Paris are a stirring reminder of what is at stake. The Louis's and Antoinettes of Brussels are determined to imposed unelective government of 27 countries through the Lisbon Treaty project. For the first time in EU history, a document whose provisions have essentially been rejected by 3 nations in referenda is being foisted on 2 of them by elected parliamentarians. And so it is that just as Ireland saved civilisation in the Dark Ages through the spread of learning by our scholars who travelled Europe, so too are we now called to save democracy in Europe through the defiance - as in the past - of powerful, unelected and even elected elites, for some of whom taking the EU shilling is an acceptable inducement for the abandonment of the principles on which this Republic was founded - the principle of national self-determination. The men and women of 1916 would turn in their graves to see such an unholy alliance between the forces of politics, the media, leaders of business-organisations and unions who largely refuse to ballot their own members, no doubt fearful they would not give "the right answer". Is this democracy - the notion that government should be 'of the people, for the people, by the people"? Because it sure doesn't feel like it from where I'm standing.

What is especially frustrating about the Lisbon debate, from the perspective of all true democrats, is the dismissive, condescending and arrogant tone adopted by the elites towards the people who voted no. We are being blamed by them for the recession that they were largely responsible for landing us in. When a Government resorts to such subliminable messages, it has truly ceased to represent the people and instead substituted representation of outside elites, many of them themselves without a mandate, and based outside this country. The Government gives the impression of representing not Ireland in Europe - but Europe in Ireland. But have no illusions as to the kind of "Europe" they are defending. It is not the people of Europe, who do not want this Treaty, which is why Ireland was the sole country to have a referendum on Lisbon, though the French and Dutch peoples rejected the 95% identical EU Constitution. No. The 'Europe' the elites defend is one of vested-interests, including Dickensian employers in search of cheap-labour (as was shown by the aftermath of Nice and EU Enlargement, when assurances on immigration by figures such as Dick Roche, Willie O'Dea and Proinsias de Rossa were proven wildly inaccurate). In an interview with the Irish Catholic at Government Buildings in 2002, Roche stated: "It is the view of the Irish government and a number of other governments that this idea that there is going to be a huge influx of immigrants is just not supported. The evidence is just not there for it. They are not going to flood to the west. The same rules are going to apply in all 15 states. There is no evidence to suggest that the people of the Czech Republic or Poland are less anxious to stay in their home as we are." In a letter to the Irish Times on 20th August 2002, Proinsias de Rossa claimed that a "trickle" would come: "It is a deliberate misrepresentation to suggest that tens of thousands will suddenly descend en masse on Ireland...The expected trickle of immigration to Ireland will on balance benefit the Irish economy...I estimate that fewer than 2,000 will choose our distant shores each year""Bizarrely, some of the elites now try not merely to deny the future as before, but seemingly to deny the present as well. That is apparent from Brian Crowley MEP's contention that Lisbon will aid the fight against drug-trafficking. He obviously is not aware of the proposed Article 29.4.7. of the Irish Constitution as amended by the 28th Amendment to the Constitution Bill 2009, if we vote no. Article 7 would empower the Government, with the support of the Oireachtas, to take Ireland into the Schengen Area, which would abolish passport-controls on immigration into Ireland from this 25 country group. It would also permit the Government, with the consent of the Oireachtas, to abolish the Protocol that allows the Irish Government to optin/out on an ad hoc basis to common policies in the field of Justice and Home Affairs, including asylum and immigration, policing, border controls, the powers of Europol/Eurojust and of the European Public Prosecutor (an office Lisbon allows the European Council to establish by unanimity). It states: "7° The State may exercise the options or discretions— i to which Article 20 of the Treaty on European Union relating to enhanced cooperation applies, ii under Protocol No. 19 on the Schengen acquis integrated into the framework of the European Union annexed to that treaty and to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (formerly known as the Treaty establishing the European Community), and iii under Protocol No. 21 on the position of the United Kingdom and Ireland in respect of the area of freedom, security and justice, so annexed, including the option that the said Protocol No. 21 shall, in whole or in part, cease to apply to the State,but any such exercise shall be subject to the prior approval of both Houses of the Oireachtas." .But the relationship between people-trafficking and Lisbon goes beyond this. Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union as amended by Lisbon states that the Charter of Fundamental Rights shall have "the same legal value as the Treaties". The relevance to immigration and asylum is found most directly in Articles 17/18/19 of the Charter, but there are also implied implications in Articles related to the right to work (Article 15), health, education etc. Article 18 states:"The right to asylum shall be guaranteed with due respect for the rules of the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 and the Protocol of 31 January 1967 relating to the status of refugees and in accordance with the Treaty establishing the European Community.". Article 19(1) states: "1. Collective expulsions are prohibited.", while Article 15 states "Everyone has the right to engage in work and to pursue a freely chosen or accepted occupation.". The State, in the midst of a fiscal crisis with a deficit of €21 billion, could find itself hauled before the ECJ and forced to subsidise free healthcare and education for illegal-immigrants, on the basis of the Charter's absolute prohibition on "discrimination" on grounds of nationality. While opposed to racism, I think we need to get real on this question. Nation states have always discriminated on grounds of nationality to some degree, by virtue of restrictions on non-citizens with respect, for example, to voting rights, access to the labour-market and social-welfare. Were it not the case, nation states - especially in Big Government countries in the EU - would rapidly become bankrupt. So the last thing Ireland needs is Big Brother telling us what to do in the fields of asylum and immigration in general, and in terms of entitlements for illegal immigrants in particular. Yet that is where the road to Lisbon takes us. And if the Chen (2004) and Metock (2008) cases are anything to go by, there are no prizes for guessing the likely outcome of such challenges to Irish law in this area on the basis of the Charter. With Chen in 2004, the ECJ required EU member states to grant rights to the mother accuring from the EU citizenship of a Chinese mother whose child had been born in NI (on the basis of advice for her own solicitor). The Metock case in August 2008 struck down Irish law in the area of marriages-of-convenience. Prior to this ruling, Irish law had denied automatic residency to non-EU spouses without prior residency in another EU member state. In this respect, Ireland was supported by other member states, including the UK and Germany, but the ECJ had other ideas, with respect to a highly questionable interpretation on the latter's part of the Freedom of Movement Directive, which calls into question what we are told as to the certainty of the pro-Lisbon camp with respect to future interpretations of the Charter by the ECJ in this area. The ECJ is an activist court, and has been exposed as such by its own hand, and those of critics such as former German President Roman Herzog. Herzog recently produced a paper outlining the phenomenon of "competence creep" by the ECJ, referring in particular to the Mangold case in which a German law intended to assist those aged 58 and over to find work was struck down as discriminatory by the ECJ. This was in spite of the fact that the deadline for the implementation of the relevant EU directive cited by the court had not yet been reached. In the ruling, the ECJ included in the basis for its ruling what it called "constitutional traditions common to member states". Yet the Herzog paper demonstrates that such traditions do not exist in all member states. So this is not a court that can be trusted to confine itself to the letter of the law when interpreting the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

German court in blow to Lisbon

2009-06-21T15:47:00.000-07:00

The German Constitutional Court has ruled that ratification of the Lisbon Treaty must cease pending additional legislation to strengthen the role of the national parliament in EU decisionmaking. The treaty's compatibility with the German Constitution was challenged by Conservative lawmaker Peter Gauweiller of the Christian Social Union, Bavaria's ruling party (and sister party to Mrs Merkel's CDU). It was also challenged by members of Die Linke, the far left party that evolved from the former East German Communist Party. Among the objections was the claim that provisions of the treaty meant the German Parliament could be bypassed by the German government, which could then collaborate with other governments to use powers without being subject of national parliamentary control or consent Other objections included the claim that the Lisbon Treaty gives the EU the form of a federal government without democratic control, and that its common foreign and security policy would lead to the militarisation of German foreign policy. The Court rejected these arguments. It found the Lisbon Treaty was in conformity with the German Constitution, and that the act of parliament ratifying the treaty was also constitutional. The problem that caused the court to pause the German ratification process is in the accompanying legislation on the role of the German parliament in EU decision making. 'The Act extending and strengthening the rights of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat in European Union matters' was found to be unconstitutional because it does not give the two chambers of parliament enough say on EU affairs. Specifically the problem lies with the procedures the Lisbon Treaty proposes for making changes to the EU treaties in the future. Lisbon has what is known as the 'general bridging clause' which allows the European Council to decide, unanimously, to move a competence from unanimity to Qualified Majority Voting. While all national parliaments most get six months notice of an intention to make such a change, and any one of them can veto the move, Germany's constitutional court said this was an insufficient role for the parliament. It insists that Germany's parliament must legislate to enable the German government to agree to this. A similar legislative safeguard is required for the 'Flexibility Clause', where EU leaders can (acting unanimously, and with the prior consent of the European Parliament) give themselves power to attain one of the objectives of the EU as set out in the treaties, but where the treaties themselves have not provided the necessary powers. National parliaments must be notified by the Commission. But Germany's court ruling goes further, insisting that the Federal parliament must pass an act giving consent to the German government. The court also listed some other areas where the parliament's role has to be defined in law before Lisbon can be ratified - notably in the fields of criminal law and the definition of cross border crimes (an extension of the list will now require a German act of parliament), the so called 'emergency brake' procedure in Judicial co-operation, which the court says requires parliamentary approval before use.The ruling underlines "no" campaign concerns about the impact of the Treaty on the democratic-deficit in the European Union, not least with respect to the role (or lack of it) of national parliaments. Lisbon will allow the Government to further erode the national-veto and to do so without the consent of the Irish people in a referendum. Article 48 of the Treaty on the European Union as amended by Lisbon allows for a "simplified revision process", whereby the text of the Treaties can be amended by the Council of the European Union (heads of government) without recourse to national parliaments or electorates. And while the Protocol on the Role of National Parliaments does afford them 8 weeks notice of new legislation initiated by the European Commission, they are not empowered from obstruct EU legislation itself.

The ruling comes amidst growing controversy over the status of the 'legal guarantees' offered to Ireland to help the Government win a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. UK Europe Minister Baroness Kinnock (wife of former Labour leader Neil Kinnock) has told the House of Lords that they will not have the force of EU law until added as a Protocol to a future Accession Treaty. She said: "Those guarantees do not change the Lisbon treaty; the European Council conclusions are very clear on them. The Lisbon treaty, as debated and decided by our Parliament, will not be changed and, on the basis of these guarantees, Ireland will proceed to have a second referendum in October." She added: "Nothing in the treaty will change and nothing in the guarantees will change the treaty as your Lordships agreed it....My Lords, what we have in the guarantees will become binding in international law when the guarantees are translated into a protocol at the time of the next accession, which presumably will be when Croatia or Iceland comes in. Before that protocol can be ratified by the UK, Parliament must pass a Bill. As I said, Parliament will rightly have the final say." But Foreign Secretary David Milliband appeared to contradict her during questions at the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee yesterday, stating: "Every head of state agrees that these guarantees do not change the Treaty...the guarantees are legally-binding in international law... It does not require ratification in order to have legal affect." This lead the Chairman of the Committee to ask, "If this is a legally-binding decision and doesn't need ratification, why does it need to be put in a protocol?" He asked, "Is it a stitch-up to get around Irish peoples' concerns? I can see why people would be suspicious." To confuse things further, Liberal Democrat MEP and self-described "militant federalist" Andrew Duff has claimed that an Irish Protocol appended to an Accession Treaty would be challenged in the courts as it would violate EU law, saying: "Adding this protocol to the Croatian accession treaty would leave the treaty wide open to attack in the courts...".According to the Irish Times, "he added that rules in the EU treaties governing accession treaties only allow issues pertaining to a state's accession to be dealt with." Clearly, the credibility of the Government's 'guarantee's is not something they can take for granted. I, for one, am far from convinced of their veracity.

Brussels resisting Irish guarantees

2009-06-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

EU foreign ministers are resisting providing the legal guarantees being sought by the Irish government on the Lisbon Treaty. The Irish government is keen that the 'assurances' in the areas of taxation, neutrality and social affairs be attached as protocols to the next available treaty (possibly Croatia's accession treaty) and then ratified by all member states, enshrining the guarantees into European law. But member states – such as the UK and the Czech Republic – fear this could reopen their respective national debates on the Lisbon Treaty. They are instead pushing for a legal declaration from EU leaders at a European Council later this week (18-19 June). Czech European Affairs Minister Stefan Fule said on Monday that the "legal form" of the assurances required further discussion in order to: "ensure a smooth passage for the required guarantees during the European council,", adding: "Very good progress has been made and we are well on track to reach agreement at this week's European Council," he said. "Reaching consensus this week is important not only for Ireland but for the whole of Europe." Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin claimed the response to the draft texts "has been very positive so far" and that he was "quietly confident" that Ireland would secure the legally binding guarantees it was seeking. The Irish government is eager to return from this week's meeting of EU leaders with enough to convince Irish voters to back the treaty in a second referendum likely to take place in September or October. The Government wants to have them added to the next treaty following Lisbon in response to critics who said they could otherwise be superseded by the European Court of Justice. On RTE's Questions and Answers last Monday, constitutional-law expert Paul Anthony McDermott warned: "It's not clear they have any legal status...They are mumbo-jumbo. These legal guarantees - they're meaningless. The rest of Europe will sign up to anything if it gets them off the hook on Europe. But if you were ever to go to a court in Europe and try to rely on one of these pieces of paper you would be told "what article of the Treaty are you suing on and the answer would be I'm not suing on the Treaty, I'm suing on a piece of paper Ireland passed around the Council of Ministers and everyone signed up to it" so I'm certainly not a big fan of having another referendum.".

Amidst the gloating of the Lisbon-elites as to the fate of some anti-Lisbon candidates in the Irish euro elections lies a simply truth: this election was not fought on European issues, but on national ones. It also cannot be separated from the broader European context. For to do so, would represent hypocrisy on the part of those on the other side who sought to demonise Libertas on the basis of controversial comments on issues ranging from torture, to false accusations of anti-semitism and neo-Nazism with respect to its candidates in other EU countries. The Irish elite are trying to portray the defeat of Libertas across Europe as a humiliating defeat and a victory for the pro-Lisbon cause. Yet it is not so simple. Traditionally, the constitutional-architecture of the European Union has demanded unanimous treaty-ratification by the member states. It is abundantly clear from these elections in the 27 member states that where Lisbon is concerned, such a mandate does not exist - at least at popular level. The most glaring example of this can be found in the UK elections, where Labour - pushing through the deeply unpopular Lisbon Treaty without a referendum in the teeth of opposition from their own Eurosceptic population - was pushed to a humilating fourth-place behind the Tories, Liberal Democrats and even the UK Independence party. On 15.7% of the vote, they are now weaker than they have been since the 19th century. Were the results replicated in a General Election, the BBC estimates the Tories would return to power after 12 years with a majority of 28. The size of that majority should evoke memories of the last Tory govt, which was constantly at the mercy of its Eurosceptic backbenchers, particularly after the strong leadership contest in the party by John Redwood in 1995. In any case, party leader David Cameron is, if anything, far more of a Eurosceptic than his predecessor, promising - if Lisbon has not yet come into force across Europe - to withdraw the articles of ratification from Vienna and put the Treaty to a referendum that would certainly end in the rejection of the Treaty. And the Irish have allies further afield too. The Treaty remains under consideration by the German Constitutional Court, and further challenges are pending in the Czech Constitutional Court by Senators opposed to it. The Czech and Polish Presidents themselves continue to refusal to put their signature to it unless and until the Irish first vote no. And even then, it is far from clear that President Klaus will sign it. He is not obliged to by the Czech Constitution. Some in the leftist Opposition and a former Green minister in the deposed Coalition government have called for Klaus to be impeached, but the Constitution is clear on this: the Constitutional Court would make the final decision, and it appears that short of being incapacitated or having committed and act of treason, the President will remain in Prague Castle for the remainder of his four year term. It seems probable then, that if the Irish people and Klaus hold out until the next UK General Election, the Lisbon Treaty will be consigned to the dustbin of European history where it belongs. In that context, it is imperative that we stand our ground, that (in Lincoln's words) "government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth".

Ganley surges in final days - Red C poll

2009-05-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

Reports reached us last night that the Sunday Business Post's regional breakdowns of tomorrow's Red C election poll would not be released, but that their findings would show a surge for anti-Lisbon candidates Declan Ganley (Libertas) and Toireasa Ferris (SF). According to the source, on politics.ie, the newspaper would acknowledge a swing to Ganley: "but won't give the numbers, but I'm told 16% with a massive MOE of about 6% because of the sample size. Ganley's own people have been trying to push some internal research showing him on 23% and heading the poll with massive support in Galway, but no newsdesk has bitten yet because nobody (me included) thinks its credible. Mind you, the SBP figures make it just a little bit more possible". Meanwhile, in South, a compelling three-way contest is brewing between sitting anti-Lisbon Independent and disability-rights campaigner Kathy Sinnott, Labour's Senator Alan Kelly, and the dark horse who came from nowhere - Sinn Féin Mayor of Kerry Toireasa Ferris. However, the claims also raise ethical questions as to whether or not the newspaper, which - as a major player in the Irish newspaper-industry - owes it to its readership and the electorate to release the regional-breakdowns in full. This angle is alluded to by the source, who references the fact that when Ganley was on 5% in Northwest in the previous Red C poll, this was published by the newspaper. From my own personal perspective I believe they should publish, or have their impartiality called into question. While by no means the most serious offender, I am of the view that on balance, the Business Post has tended towards support for the Lisbon Treaty and by extension, the pro-Lisbon cause - a matter obviously relevant to these elections. As the only member state holding a referendum on the controversial Treaty (which as the EU Constitution was rejected by France and the Netherlands), the outcome of these elections will set the stage for the Autumn referendum in Ireland, and play a role in influencing the credibility of either side in the campaign. In that context, and in view of the enormous implications for Irish sovereignty of a decision to ratify or otherwise, I therefore call on the Business Post to release - as it has done in the past - the regional-breakdowns of tomorrow's Red C poll on the euro-elections.

Asked how the Business Post will portray the swing to Ganley, he adds they will "sit on the fence. He'll want to be able to say that the SBP picked up the swing if Ganley wins, but won't want to be seen as giving Ganley too much momentum", adding they are "writing a piece on Ganley's position on neutrality also, which I imagine won't be pleasant for Libertas supporters. Then again, all papers have discredited themselves on Ganley to the extent that I don't think smears work any more". I was concerned by this, in particular the question of whether the publication had a political-motivation in concealing its hard-data on Ganley's performance in Northwest. However, the source adds "they have picked up what some are calling a "big swing" to Ganley in the North West, with him picking up about 10% on where he was previously. Most party sources believe Ganley is on about 16% and rising and the RED C poll seems to confirm this. The key for Ganley will be momentum in the final week - if he can finish in the top 3 with 17-18% most observers agree that he will be safe enough. However, the Irish Times poll showing him stalling cannot be discounted, and we will have to wait and see on this one. In South, I'm told the increase in the Ferris vote makes up for much of the overall 3% national swing to Sinn Fein, and that she has moved into the "top tier" of candidates alongside Sinnott and Kelly. This is good news for Sinnott if she can stay ahead of Ferris, and curtains for Kelly as it is generally assumed that Ferris will benefit Sinnott when she goes out. As for Eoin Ryan in Dublin,"Fianna Failers are now certain that Ryan is a gonner. As in dead and buried. They are also worried about East, and feel that polls in NW are vastly overstating their vote. I know one FFstaffer who has put €500 on the party returning ony one MEP. Still too early to say, but Euro polls are notoriously unreliable. In NW, the relentless attacks on Ganley should be seen as a real indicator of how worried the parties are about him. Notice how none of them have attacked McLochlainn - they don't fear him, but they do think Ganley is a threat for a seat".

These expectations seem borne out by the actual results of the poll, which - as predicted - did not include the usual regional breakdown. For the Euro elections, the results are: FF: 20%,FG: 34%, Labour: 14%, SF: 9%, Greens: 4%, Libertas: 4% and Independents 15%. Without such a breakdown, all we have to go on is commentary by Richard Colwell (Red C) and Pat Leahy - and I have no beef with either of them. But it means we have to take their word for it when it comes to the likely apportionment of seats, which Colwell does as follows: "Liam Aylward is still in with a fighting chance for the third seat in the East constituency…Libertas support does appear to be on an upward trend…Almost all of this support is for the party’s founder, Declan Ganley, who, based on the poll’s constituency-figures, could yet be in with a shout to take a seat in the North West. This is a significant gain in two weeks and means he is a real threat to Gallagher, O’Reilly and Independent Marian Harkin…Harkin does remain in the running for a seat in the North West constituency, but could suffer at the hands of Libertas.". The national poll, in showing Libertas support at 4%, needs to be seen in the context of them only contesting three constituencies (Dublin, East and Northwest), but the fact that Ganley - written off for months by a hostile media in a manner familiar to the PDs for their 27 years on this earth - now stands on the threshold of ousting Harkin or sending Pat the Cope back to Leinster House despite an existence of barely six months must rank as a considerable acheivement and - on the context of these recessionary - even depressionary times - not an untimely one. Indeed even Jamie Smyth on the Irish Times blog, not exactly known as a friend of Libertas or the no campaign, is gracious enough to acknowledge than a successful election for the party cannot be ruled out, and that: "I think it is too early for yes campaigners to start counting their chickens ahead of the October vote. For one thing the economy is in such a bad state and sentiment towards the government is so poor that a Lisbon II referendum could become a referendum on the government. In other words, people may vote no to Lisbon simply to force Brian Cowen to stand down and prompt an election and a change of government.". We disagree of course, of the reasons for the no vote, but it is nonetheless comforting that the general nastiness of this election cycle can at times be rendered civilised and devoid of the kind of arrogance the Irish people have had to endure from our political, intellectual and media-elites since voting "the wrong way" last year. It is a trait others, like Europe Minister Dick Roche, might do well to learn.

Stop the blasphemy ban

2009-04-29T05:38:00.000-07:00

Alarmingly for those of us who value Western freedoms including speech, the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, has revealed his intention to make "blasphemous libel" a crime, punishable by a fine of €100,000. From the Irish Times:"Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern proposes to insert a new section into the Defamation Bill, stating: “A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000.” “Blasphemous matter” is defined as matter “that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion; and he or she intends, by the publication of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.” Where a person is convicted of an offence under this section, the court may issue a warrant authorising the Garda Síochána to enter, if necessary using reasonable force, a premises where the member of the force has reasonable grounds for believing there are copies of the blasphemous statements in order to seize them.What is interesting so far is the relative silence of the Left on the fundamental question of there being a blasphemy-ban. Even Labour Justice spokesman Pat Rabbitte, who wants the fine reduced to €1,000, and to exempt from the definition of blasphemy: "any matter that had any literary, artistic, social or academic merit." does not appear to call into question the wisdom of introducing such an offence into law in the first place.

It has to be asked where the impetus for this legislation is coming from. Is it from the Catholic Right, which has been fighting a losing battle for political-influence since 1992 (when the Irish people voted to legalise travel and information related to abortion), including the defeat of the 2002 Abortion-referendum, or is it from what the Left like to call "the new communities" i.e. particularly foreign-nationals of the Islamic faith in particular? In that respect, we would do well to bear in mind research across Europe on the attitudes of Muslim communities to questions pertaining to traditional Western freedoms, notably freedom of the press and of speech - and in particular, the question of blasphemy. With respect to British Muslims, an ICM opinion poll in 2006 revealed an astonishing 40% of them want Islamic Sharia law to be introduced in Muslim parts of the country. In relation to the Danish cartoons: The full figures on ICM’s website reveal some interesting bits and pieces that weren’t reported in the Sunday Telegraph. British Muslims surveyed by ICM were almost unaminous (97%) in thinking that the publication of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed was wrong, 77% said they personally were very offended by the cartoons, 9% said they were a little offended and 11% said they were not offended. Moreover: "Regarding reactions to the cartoons, 14% of British Muslims thought it was right for protesters in Muslim countries to attack Danish embassies and 12% thought it was right for “demonstrators to carry placards calling for the killing of those who insult Islam”. 13% said it was right “to exercise violence against those who are deemed by religious leaders to have insulted them”. The Left were at the forefront of dismantling decades of theocracy in this State, notably in the struggle against the bans on divorce and homosexuality. It would surely be ironic then, if in the name of Political-Correctness and a wish to appeal to a minority of newcomers to our shores, they were to take a step backwards from Enlightenment ideals of Western freedom in order to get us to a place at least as bad as where we started in the first place. All true liberals and democrats should oppose this bill, and make their views on it known to the powers that be - particularly on the Green benches in Leinster House. They forced Fianna Fáil's hand on the by-elections - maybe they can do the same with the Defamation Bill. For the email addresses of your TDs. see here.

Pamela Izevbekhai an asylum cheat - Mirror

2009-03-27T01:05:00.000-07:00

Today the Independent and the Mirror are owed a profound debt of gratitude on behalf of the Irish people for their successful expositions of the deceitful way in which Pamela Izevbekhai has sought to remain in Ireland under false pretences. According to Tom Brady, Security Correspondent of the Irish Independent, a Garda Investigation into the Nigerian asylum-seeker who is facing deportation has uncovered evidence she used forged documentation to back up claims that her first child died after being subjected to female genital mutilation. Discrepancies in the case presented by Pamela Izevbekhai to the High Court and Supreme Court in Dublin and to the European Court of Human Rights have been uncovered, including revelations that she personally solicited a doctor to forge a death-certificate for her fictional daughter, 'Elizabeth Izevbekhai'. While Dr Joseph Unokanjo states that he refused the request, he does nonetheless reveal that the supposed death-certificate, "a document, allegedly signed by him, as a forgery. He also rejected Mrs Izevbekhai's claim that she gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, in February 1993 and that the girl died on July 16, 1994, following female genital mutilation. The findings represent a potentially serious blow to the prospects of Mrs Izevbekhai overturning a Supreme Court decision supporting her deportation in her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. In an affidavit lodged with the European Court in Strasbourg, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Joseph Unokanjo, who practises at Isioma Hospital, in Lagos, says he can confirm that no baby called Elizabeth Izevbekhai was delivered by him at the hospital and no baby of that name has ever been treated by him for any ailment, including post-circumcision complications. Gardai were also told there is no evidence of Elizabeth's death at the registry of deaths in Lagos, although a death certificate was presented to the Irish courts on behalf of Mrs Izevbekhai. Dr Unokanjo says he did not sign an affidavit purported to have been sworn by him on March 9, 2006, and did not issue a certificate of cause of death, which purported to come from Isioma hospital on July 17, 1994. Confirming the signatures are not his, he also says he is incorrectly described on that affidavit as a surgeon, and that the hospital stamp and hospital address are false. He emphasises the purported affidavit was not made by him and says he believes it is a forgery". In a further damning revelation in this shocking case, he "recalled that Pamela Enitan Izevbekhai telephoned him some years ago requesting him to issue a death certificate in respect of a dead child to enable her to be given asylum in the Republic of Ireland". He told her he did not involve himself in such activities, particularly since he was aware that she neither had a baby before 1999, and nor had she lost a baby. Dr Unokanjo also states the alleged medical certificate of the 'cause of death' is a forgery".

Now I know we have all come to expect gullibility of the most incredible kind from the Leinster House liberals since the onset of large-scale illegal-immigration to this Republic sicne the mid-1990's. In apparent amnesia of their primary responsibility to the people to whom they owe their political-careers in elective office, the Leinster House set have seen fit at almost every opportunity (save the Citizenship referendum regarding former Justice Minister McDowell and a small number of other select cases that are two few to mention) - even now in the face of the rapid collapse of our economy - to support and believe - or at least pretend to believe - the excuses and half-truths of those who wish to abuse our asylum-system for a purpose it was never purported to be designed to serve - namely economic-migration. For I am not opposed to legal economic-migration to this country - quite the contrary. While I have often held that - in the context of a recession, aswell as the necessity for the country to experience a reasonable lead-in time to learn the lessons, and avoid repeating the mistakes of France, Britain and the Netherlands with respect to integrating their new arrivals from overseas - we need to move from a policy of open-borders to a policy of regulation and control of immigration - I have always held firm to the belief that it is morally and politically wrong to scapegoat migrants as a whole for what is - at the end of the day - a failure by the political-class to adequately reconcile the economic and social needs of this country with humanitarian and cultural imperatives including the absorption-capacity of a small country like ourselves when determining immigration and asylum-policy. But that is not the same as not holding to account those who are in clear abuse of the principles upon which international law in the area of asylum, including the 1952 Refugee Convention, is supposed to be based. If indeed it is true - as it seems very much to be - that Pamela Izevbekha has sank so low in terms of morality as to concoct a work of fiction involving a nonexistent daughter who died of FGM, in order to emotionally blackmail the Irish State, to the detriment of the Irish taxpayer that is forced to oppose her application in the courts, into allowing her leave to remain in this country, then she should not only be ashamed, but so too should those who so typically condemned all those who saw through her. In particular I would like to single out for criticism figures such as Labour Lord Mayor of Sligo Veronica Cawley, who organised a civil-reception in her honour, as well as Fine Gael figures such as John Perry TD, who were amongst those calling for her to be allowed leave to remain in the State. Those politicians who have chosen to identify themselves with her case have now been shown to have egg on their faces. The Hard Left will probably stand by her. For them, the issue is an ideological one, rather than a case governed by merits or particular circumstance - they just want open-borders fullstop. I suppose it would be too much to ask Senator David Norris to see reason on this matter and admit the error of his ways in rubbishing correspondance he claimed to have received casting doubt on her story of how she arrived in Ireland. But one can always hope. She has outstayed her welcome in our country, and betrayed the noble cause of fighting the scourge of FGM in our world. She has also seen fit to manipulate the emotions of the Irish people, many of whom flocked to her cause when it seemed to them to be based on a mother's love for her children and a desire to protect them from a real and present danger - a danger now proven to be nothing but an illusion. This is a wakeup call for the Leinster House liberals. It is now time, in these recessionary times, for them to be true to the old maxim that charity begins at home. No more €1 million cases spent in legal guerilla-war in our courts challenging manifestly bogus asylum-claims. It's time to spend the money where it's really needed and deserved - on helping the old, the sick and the vulnerable, including the few genuine asylum-seekers resident in this State. 100,000 people have lost their jobs since the start of 2008, with up to half a million expected to be on the Live Register by Christmas. In the context of a €20 billion deficit, economies must be made and priorities imposed. Manifestly-unfounded asylum cases should not be among them.

Crack down on work-permits - O'Flynn

2009-02-07T18:21:00.001-08:00

It's about time too. Cork North-central Fianna Fáil TD Noel O'Flynn has called for a crackdown on the issuing of non-EEA work-permits to migrant workers. The call will surely provoke much hand-wringing from the so-called 'anti-racism industry' (which exists to exaggerate the extent of racism in the country in order to silence debate on immigration-controls), which arguably includes the great majority of the folks in Leinster House. But it merits a more enlightened, considered and intelligent response, reflective of the changed times in which we find ourselves. Taoiseach Cowen and prospective-Taoiseach Kenny would do well to recognise that with the Celtic Tiger well and truly buried, the cupboard is bare and the capacity of the State to absorb immigration-flows on the scale we have seen since 2004 in particular is not what it was. With unemployment at 9.2%, it is no longer tenable for politicians to cite labour-shortages to justify the open-door policy. They will argue that in the context of the EU membership of ourselves as the former Accession-States in Eastern Europe, the State is powerless to affect limitations on the numbers allowed to travel here - and that is true. But such constraints do not govern the non-EEA work-permit and student-visa system, which the Government continues - on the basis of official statistics related to the number of PPS no's issued - to hand out like there is no tomorrow. Government figures show that 33,200 people from the Accession stateswere granted PPS numbers between July and December, a decline of 47 per cent on the same period in 2007. Specifically, in the last six months of 2008, the numbers issued to Poles declined by 53 per cent. Despite fewer Poles registered in December than in any month since their country joined the EU they remain the largest national group on the list compiled by the Department of Social and Family Affairs, with 42,554 having been allocated PPS numbers that year, followed by British (12,285), French (7,066) and Lithuanian (6,443) applicants. I suppose it's easy to be generous with other people's jobs. Already in 2009, in the midst of our worst recession since the 1980's, the issuing of PPS numbers remains high. Of the 17,532 issued in January alone, 8,499 were to foreign nationals. Broken down by nationality, 2,821 were issued to nationals of the former Accession-states, After all, noone on the hallowed halls of Leinster House, on either side of the chamber, faces a realistic prospect of displacement with cheap-labour by the remorseless hands of Dickensian employers - do they?

The high-priests of multiculturalism need to be challenged in the context of mature debate on the merits and demerits of this ideology. Too often the elite has uniformly balked at any suggestion that anything other than a liberal, open-door model combining the encouragement by the State of mass-immigration and an ideology that places all cultures on an equal footing should be questioned. In that respect, the stance of 'Official Ireland' is at variance with European trends. The nominally Socialist government of Spain has introduced subsidised voluntary-repatriation. The Italian government is led by a man who has rightly castigated the failings of multiculturalism, and whose Coalition includes the more hardline Northern League of Umberto Bossi. In the recent Austrian General Election, 2 Far-Right parties, the Freedom Party and the Alliance for Austria's Future, repeated their success of 2000 with a combined 29% share of the popular-vote, forcing the Socialists and the conservative Peoples Party into Coalition. In 2007, President Sarkozy of France won at least half of the former Le Pen vote on a platform of tighter immigration-controls, 'integration' of immigrants and opposition of Turkey to the European Union - all positions I would argue are popular with the Irish people but seemingly opposed by the Irish political and intellectual elites. Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against any law-abiding member of any ethnolinguistic group. But I insist that the Western freedoms for which generations of Irish and Europeans have given their lives be maintained, and that newcomers who come to our shores accept that this be so. Assimilation - not multiculturalism - is the way forward in terms of integrating immigrants with host-societies. We have the misfortune in Ireland of continuing to be governed by a postwar political and intellectual generation that sets its face against the reality that we have learned since 911 in general but since the world recession in particular. Now is a time when Irish and western workers are finding themselves forced to choose between competing with cheap-labour at home or emigrating abroad. This is not the fault of the immigrants. As far as I am concerned both the Irish and the foreign-nationals are victims of ill-thoughtout social-engineering by a condescending, PC and largely leftist elite. The French, British, Dutch and Spanish peoples have had a longer lead-time than us with which to experiment with the multicultural-model, and it has damaged both themselves and the newcomers by eroding a sense of cohesion and common-focus. By insisting that the State remain culturally-neutral and that the host-society make concessions to new cultures and regard them as equally valid as the host-culture, the proponents of the ideology have unwittingly or otherwise created fertile ground for Islamic-radicalism. I still recoil in horror at the memory of the "Behead Blair" demos in the UK. If you accept the principle of absolute cultural-equality (which is separate from the equality of the person - something I distinguish from "culture" which is defined a way of life), then you are - whether you like it or not - condoning the spread of Islamic radicalism. According to the British media, 4,000 British-born Muslims were trained in Al Qaida camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In particular, concerns have been raised about the proliferation of schools called madrassas in Pakistan, which historically were supported by that country's intelligence-services (ISI) to provide a fertile ground for recruitment for the Taliban and Al Qaida - something that began during the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980's. Then as now (though in a very different context), the West made a fools-bargain with radical-Islam, in the name of defeating an abhorrent ideology. Communism was defeated but what was spawned in its place? The Afghan people were sentenced to 12 years of civil-war and tyrannical Taliban-rule, setting up a chain of events that would one day lead to the terror-attacks on the West in New York, Washington, Madrid, London and against largely Australian tourists in Bali, Indonesia. The ideology our elite claim to be fighting is "racism". A noble aim, surely. But the political-class in Ireland have gone into overkill, demonising any and all calls for tighter controls on Muslim immigration in the supposed aim of 'anti-racism'. In particular, note the hysterical and disgraceful villification visited on Leo Varadkar - largely by Labour but also by Fianna Fáil figures such as Minister Mary Hanafin - some months ago for calling for calling for subsidised voluntary-repatriation for migrants. That an Irishman of mixed-race origins could be accused of making racist comments is the height of nonsense - even in a political-class so hopelessly engrossed in PC-thinking as this one.

New smear campaign against Libertas.

2009-01-22T08:47:00.001-08:00

I said this was coming, and it has. Having failed to impune the integrity of Libertas-founder Declan Ganley, the Irish Times are now engaged in efforts at guilt-by-association. In that respect they are at one with the sleazy attempts by RTE - funded by you and me as license-payers - to do likewise - but this time they are casting their nets wider, to the Czech Republic where the Irish Times attempts to throw mud by linking the Irish Libertas by association with its Czech counterpart. Some will question the wisdom of going under a common umbrella which was always going to open a Pandora's box in terms of guilt-by-association on behalf of the Grand Inquisitors of the Irish Times and other malignant organs of the "yes" campaign, but the public know that Fianna Fáil are in no position to lecture others on ethics, not least considering the fallout from 11 years of the Mahon and Moriarty tribunals and the pending trial of a well-known party-figure for bribery (which to his credit he has come clean - you know who I'm talking about). In contrast, there have been no charges of any kind brought against figures in the Irish Libertas-organisation, so the muckrackers have had to cast their nets-wider, and do so in today's IT, with a tabloid-esque headline stating "Businessman Declan Ganley has recruited a Czech MEP and former media mogul, Vladimir Zelezny, to help set up a Libertas branch in the Czech Republic in advance of the European elections. The appointment is the first significant announcement made by Libertas in central and eastern Europe, where Mr Ganley hopes to win scores of seats in the June elections. Mr Zelezny is a colourful and controversial character. He is currently being investigated by the Czech authorities for tax fraud and abuse of creditors.He is co-founder of the state’s first commercial television station, Nova TV, which became the Czech Republic’s most popular channel by broadcasting popular US imports such as Baywatch and featuring naked women reading the weather forecast.". The mischievous halftruths of this article are exposed by the subsequent Libertas press-release, which reveals Irish Libertas or Ganley had no hand, act or part in selecting Mr.Zelezny to lead their Czech counterpart, stating "Libertas Chairman Declan Ganley has this morning strongly rejected as false and untrue a report by the Irish Times suggesting that he has "recruited" Mr. Vladimir Zelezny MEP and "appointed" him to a position in the Czech Republic. Mr. Ganley said that while Mr. Zelezny had registered the name Libertas in the Czech Republic, this action was not done on the request of Libertas in either Dublin or Brussels, and indicated nothing more than the enthusiasm of support for the Libertas project being expressed by people across the continent. He also made clear that Mr. Zelezny had not, as implied in the report, been asked to stand in the European Elections by Libertas, or in fact been the recipient of any specific request from Libertas in relation to its campaign, nor had he been the subject of any announcement made by Libertas, as reported."

Not content with smearing Libertas on it's integrity, the IT continued the usual theme of attempting to tar Mr.Ganley and the Irish organisation with the "Eurosceptic" brush (though even if it were true, what would be wrong with that in a democracy?). 'Mr. Ganley went on to firmly reject attempts made by such reports, and by the Irish Times over the past number of months, to attach his name to a Euro Sceptic agenda: "It is a well established fact that Libertas is not a Euro-sceptic organisation, nor does it espouse any Euro-sceptic policies. If calling for democracy and accountability in European governance makes one a euro-sceptic or anti-European, this raises other more serious questions on the anti-democratic path that Brussels is firmly on at present. The fact that some narrow sections of the media ignore the fact that Libertas is pro-European and not euro-sceptic would suggest that they may be falling susceptible to other agendas. We are delighted with the progress being made on the project we have undertaken, which if successful will see the voters of Europe being given a chance for the first time in Europe's history to vote on a common, reforming platform which would restore democracy, accountability, and economic common sense to the heart of Europe". I am not my brother's keeper. The reality is that even in Ireland, the no vote - like the yes vote - were coalitions of groups with sometimes incompatible opinions but who shared a common stance on the Treaty. The idea that because we don't agree on everything we are not entitled to agree on some issues is an utter nonsense. Were that the case, Charlie and Dessie and Albert and Dick would not have gone into Coalition with one another. The reality of democracy in countries like the Czech and Irish Republics is of coalition-building in common cause despite fundamental political-differences on some matters. If the Irish Times hadn't been asleep for the last 20 years you would be aware of that, and consequently would not be so damning of those who disagree on some issues pertaining to Europe happening to agree that Lisbon is bad.

Opposition should tread carefully on asylum bill.

2008-12-20T02:15:00.000-08:00

Frequentors of the blogosphere and politics.ie will know of my concerns in relation to abuses of the Irish asylum and immigration system that has lead to a derisory 25% of deportation-orders actually leading to the removal of the affected-persons from this country. Sometimes I feel that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are talking out of both sides of their mouths on the issue. The same cannot be said for Labour, whose stance on the Government's Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill 2008 (now set to drag on into 2009 and a second year since the beginning of its legislative-passage), has leaned consistently towards seeking to have the legislation watered-down. The Bill is currently in Committee Stage and here is what has transpired from the proceedings there. Pat Rabbitte has insisted that provisions in the Bill for the granting of six-month visas to trafficked persons who cooperate with the Gardai in the prosecuting of their traffickers must also apply to persons claiming to have been trafficked who refuse to so cooperate. Indeed he goes as far as to call it 'the only humanitarian position this State can take'. Meanwhile Fine Gael Immigration and Integration Spokesman Dennis Naughten, while far less strident, seemed uncomfortable with the Bill's removal of the requirement of the Gardai to forewarn those issued with deportation-orders of their respective dates of deportation. This is despite the fact that just 43 people were deported from Ireland as of the end of June this year - a staggering five-sixth's reduction in the number of deportations from 599 in 2004. In broad terms, I favour the Government's proposed legislation and call on my readers and all concerned about abuse of our asylum system to contact their local TDs to push for its timely passage through the Houses of the Oireachtas. In these recessionary times, the old adage that charity begins at home has seldom been more apt than at present. With a budget-deficit of €8 billion this year - expected to rise to at least €11 billion next year - the cupboard is simply bare and it makes little sense to make the plain people of Ireland pay for the upkeep of those (in terms of accommodation, education, health and social-welfare) whose safety did not and does not require their presence in Ireland. The case of failed Nigerian asylum-seeker Pamela Izevbekhai has become a cause-celebre in liberal and Opposition circles, with Sligo Lord Mayor Veronica Cawley and the Fine Gael party hosting receptions in support of her wish to remain in Ireland. The European Court of Human Rights was due to rule on her case on 12th December, but has deferred its judgement. Predictable slogans about the spirit of Christmas et al have dominated the liberal media's relentless pressure on Minister Ahern but I now call on him to show leadership with an asylum-system that is fair to the Irish citizens of this country, rather than exclusively to failed asylum-seekers. She has been through the asylum-appeals system for years since her arrival here (she claims via Amsterdam though the Sunday Times reports Dept. of Justice officials believe she arrived on a UK tourist visa), and has been refused asylum. In the light of the absence of direct flights between Ireland and Nigeria, and the Dublin Convention which gives EU member states the legal right to return an asylum-seeker to a previous EU country of entry, the case for allowing her to remain in this country is weak. Don't get me wrong - I am appalled and outraged at the crime of Female Genital Mutilation - but the fact remains that her claims have been investigated and her claim for asylum refused. Even assuming her claims are accurate (and desperate people will say desperate things whether they be true or not for economic motives), she does not have a legal right to remain in Ireland, and in any case, FGM is simply not prevalent in most of the African continent, as this map shows. Had her motives been purely to obtain safe-refuge she could have found it in Africa. The judiciary have played the role of useful idiots in seeking to transfer to the Irish taxpayer the burden that is rightfully that of the former colonial powers in Africa at most, or neighbouring safe African countries at least. Ireland has not been stained with the blood of the native peoples of the former European colonial empires. We ourselves were an empire. And to those who persist in lauding the qualifications of failed asylum-seekers and their potential to contribute to Irish society, might I remind you of the humanitarian case for not exacerbating the terrible scourge of emigration from the Third World, which is greatly contributing to the keeping of Africa in particular in a perpetual state of poverty. Who are the real humanitarians here?

Which returns me to the matter of the Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill itself. Despite some reservations on my part on a number of matters (including empowering the Justice Minister to introduce yet another amnesty of illegal-immigrants), I am of the view that in the final analysis, this legislation should be supported. With a staggering 60% of judicial-reviews granted in 2007 (1,100 overall) relating to the asylum and immigration-process (compared to approximately 2% of the population having been in the asylum-process at one time or another since 1994), there is an unanswerable case for streamlining the appeals-process to weed out the antics of what Integration Minister Conor Lenihan described last January as a "voracious group of barristers" in the Law Library who are clogging up the system and who are primarily responsible for the endless delays in the execution of deportation-orders. The Bill would allow for the immediate deportation without notice of failed asylum-seekers, including those in the process of judicial-review applications (unless the judge grants an injunction preventing deportations - a weakness in my view), as well as substantially increasing the powers of immigration-officers to refuse entry to the state at ports-of-entry to the State. The refusal of what is termed "permission-to-land" since former Minister McDowell has been no small part of the reasons for the massive decline in the numbers claiming asylum here since the peak of 2002 it reached when asylum-seekers were granted the right to work in this country (another factor was the removal of that questionable right, which undermined the integrity of the asylum process as a source of refuge rather than of economic-migration). Likewise the end (finally) of the absurd 'fair procedures' that dictated the State had to forewarn would-be deportees of their deportation-dates is eminently sensible to all but the most gullible of observers. The Irish people can - and no doubt will - continue to wonder why on earth the legislation has taken 2 years to get this far - and when it will pass into law. Which is where I return to the questionable role being played by the two Opposition parties in objection to some of its provisions. Fine Gael in particular would do well to remember its notorious tendency to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, while Labour would do well to recall Irish Ferries and where unregulated and unrestricted immigration policies ultimately lead. None of this is intended on my part as a scapegoating of newcomers to our court. On the contrary, I recognise the valuable contribution many legal-migrants to our country have made. But they of all people should - and I believe do - recognise that a system that rewards illegal-immigration to this country with leave to remain and the right to work on par with those who came here through lawful channels and in conformity with the rules is unfair to the latter. True equality demands that all are equally accountable to the law, and that is why this legislation must be passed presently.

Lisbon pressure threatens our democracy.

2008-12-07T13:16:00.000-08:00

With the government telling everyone but us that it intends to call a second referendum on the rejected Lisbon Treaty, the time has come to call the EU and the Irish political, media and other elites to account for the threat to democracy that is inherent in their refusal to comply with the decision of the people last June. The referendum turnout, at 53%, was higher than that of Nice 2, when the number of no voters remained largely the same numerically but the "yes" vote rose by 400,000. After the first Nice treaty referendum, the Government and the Eurocrats argued that the low turnout of just 34% justified holding a second referendum, and it was held, resulting in a turnout that had risen by 17% to 51%. However in the Lisbon referendum, the no vote soared from 534,000 to 840,000 - a huge rise of over 300,000 - compared to the second Nice treaty referendum. As such, the elite find their arguments for a second vote confined to baseless scaremongering - including in the recent report of the Oireachtas Committee on Ireland's Future in Europe - such as attempting to create imagined links between the recession and the no vote (a marked insult to the people), implying that a no vote would mean expulsion from the European Union ('effectively voting ourselves out of Europe' as Gerald Barry put it on RTE's "This Week" radio show), or other vague contentions that we are 'isolated' in Europe, invoking (as Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin did today on that latter programme) the history of European integration since 1957 as if to imply that European integration has always benefitted Ireland (a view that displaced Irish workers have reason to question). However, the more we hear from these people, the more deja vu it seems. It is likely a second referendum would mean in practice a rehash of the failed arguments of the Lisbon I campaign, but with a dose of McCarthyism added in with respect to anti-Treaty thinktank Libertas and particularly its founder Declan Ganley. As usual these consist largely of European Affairs Minister Dick Roche appearing on Prime Time and the weekend current affairs shows digging for dirt about Ganley's business dealings in the States, while finding - as usual - no evidence of illegality. And even if it were otherwise (which it wasn't), what suddenly makes Fianna Fáil the paragons of virtue in terms of political and corporate-ethics? Has Minister Roche forgotten the circumstances surrounding the departure of his former leader already? Can't he remember the 11 years of Tribunal revelations from Dublin Castle that has rightly caused masses of the Irish people - including up to 40% of Fianna Fáil voters - to take Fianna Fáil's promises and claims with a grain of salt? That is why none of this stuck in the first campaign and in all likelihood, will backfire in the second campaign.

But we shouldn't even be having a second campaign without substantial changes to the text of this Treaty. It is by far the most dangerous document ever to be presented to an Irish electorate or parliament since the Act of Union, and represents the funeral march of democracy within the European Union. A Union founded on democracy would become one founded on dictatorship of unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and Luxembourg (the seat of the European Court of Justice), and one in which Ireland and other small member states revert to the colonial status they spent centuries fighting and shedding blood to extract themselves from. What would De Valera think of placing a document like the Charter of Fundamental Rights supersede the Constitution he founded and passed in 1937? Or about a voting system that weighted the vote of Ireland on the Council of Ministers according to population by removing the overepresentation of small countries, as if we were a mere constituency of a superstate like in when we were part of the British Empire (except we had 20% of the MPs in the House of Commons compared to 2% in the European Parliament). As the architect of Irish neutrality, what would he think of our participation in the EU Battlegroups and the European Defence Agency, as well as the requirement in the Lisbon treaty that we "progressively increase" our military-capability? Of of the prospect, plain to see in the Referendum Bill 2008 that the Government may cede its veto on Justice and Home Affairs without recourse to a referendum? This is just my opinion but I firmly believe he would turn in his grave. The answer is still no, and will remain so until the elite comes back with a document that respects not only our no vote to the substantive issue last June, but also those of France and the Netherlands, whose democratic-voices are being trampled upon by the jackboots of Brussels and its faceless bureaucrats.

For 20 years 30-54% of voters turning out have been voting no and no publication has been representing them in the press. In that context the entry of the Sunday Times, Irish Mail/MoS and the Irish Sun has been a breath of fresh air and it isn't simply a case of being inducted into some purely British-ideology. Most Irish eurocritics are, unlike the UK Eurosceptics, pro-EU membership and even the Euro currency but oppose this Treaty. We differ from the pro-Lisbon folks in that we don't confuse being a good European with being a compliant one. Ultimately, we are the real pro-Europeans because we are standing up for Europe's traditional democratic foundations upon which the EU was built. Lisbon is an attempt by Brussels at sabotaging those foundations (unwitting or intentional) and if it succeeds will collapse the project in the longterm. The French and Dutch voted no, and their wishes are not being respected either by their own parliaments/govts or by ours. I believe that there is more to Europe than the politicians and their grand-designs. The 500 million EU citizens are the real Europe, and the cowardly way that their politicians ran away from promises of referenda when the French and Dutch voted no in 2005 demonstrates a fear of and resistance to allowing the peoples of Europe a direct say by referenda in matters concerning institutional reform in and transfer of sovereignty to the EU institutions. I am pro-EU, but I don't think this Treaty is consistent with maintaining popular support for the European project in the longterm. The EU will only survive with popular consent, and steamrolling something through against the democratically-expressed wishes of its nations (at citizen-level not just the elite) will only bring a Bastille moment closer. I don't want that to happen, and welcome a no vote as an opportunity for the EU to undergo the exercise in soulsearching and democratic-reforms that it failed to engage in following the French and Dutch no votes. Voting no is a positive, pro-EU step - not an anti-EU one.

Obama victory brings hope and fear

2008-11-15T19:56:00.000-08:00

One would have to have had a heart of stone to have not been inspired by the historic milestone America and the West has reached in America electing Senator Barack Obama its first African-American president and head of state. In chronological-terms it is not long since such a landmark event would have seemed implausible if not impossible - and all the more so Obama's victory in 3 former states of the Confederate South (Virginia, North Carolina and Florida). It was personally moving to see tears rolling down the faces of icons of the Civil Rights movement such as Rev.Jesse Jackson and African-American celebrities like the talkshow-queen Oprah Winfrey. As a formerly oppressed nation ourselves, the Irish people are well aware of what it is like to be discriminated against because of the ethnic-group or religion we are born into. We endured it for 400 years under a litany of repressive legislation that began with the Statutes of Kilkenny barring the native Irish from adoption and intermarriage, and then progressed to wholesale confiscation of land under the Plantations and later on the Penal Laws. We eventually righted those wrongs, culminating in the independence of 85% of our island, and likewise the African-American community were eventually able - with the support of Progressive and tolerant Whites and Hispanics - to right the wrongs done to them. In the process they have encouraged other beleaguered minorities such as the international gay-community to press on for their rights in terms of gay rights, including marriage, and the fight against hate-crimes and discrimination in the workplace and in terms of access to goods and services. This is especially relevant as the Irish gay community await the fulfillment of the Programme for Government with respect to same-sex civil-partnerships. It is just as essential that the Government and Opposition are as vociferous in standing up to the Irish Catholic hierarchy in pressing for this measure as it was for the overcoming of the glass-ceiling on ethnic-minorities aspiring to high office in the United States.

But there are broader implications for this country beyond what I have outlined above. As the economy teeters on the brink of a recession becoming a depression, the maintenance of American Foreign Direct Investment in this country becomes all the more critical to our eventual emergence from this dark economic-tunnel into which Fianna Fáil incompetence has forced us. The Obama manifesto sets out policies that would make it much more difficult for US corporations to shelter their overseas income from the US tax authorities while incentivising them to create more jobs at home. Faced with a budget deficit that could yet reach $1 trillion, the intent is obviously to increase government revenues while stimulating economic activity on the ground. This is in keeping with policies designed to reverse the downside in the US from globalisation, where many multinationals have outsourced operations to cheaper locations overseas at a cost of millions of jobs.With US stock markets in dire condition and many companies struggling for survival, Obama will have to measure the desirability of a higher tax take against the risk of endangering company viability or competitiveness in the global market. After all, his most urgent immediate task in the White House will to be to arrest the rapid decline of the US economy, which is in the maw of a crisis comparable with the Great Depression of the 1930s.Tax policy - a fundamental economic lever for any government - will be crucial to that effort. Obama was co-sponsor of a Senate bill last year that aimed to bring some $30 billion of business profits into the US tax net by curtailing the use of secretive offshore tax havens.Such jurisdictions offer zero or very low tax rates, a lack of transparency and the absence of any requirement to carry out real business. While Ireland was not specifically named, his manifesto includes a pledge to significantly modify the rules on the "deferral" of US taxation on business profits earned overseas. Deferral means means corporations don't pay US tax on foreign profit from active business until the money in question is returned to the US. A reform of the rule could see a greater portion of foreign profits taxed in the year they are booked, increasing a corporation's upfront tax bill and potentially acting as a disincentive to foreign direct investment unless there is a compelling reason to be in a market. In theory at least, an outright elimination of the system could seriously threaten US investment in Ireland."Unless you have a real reason to be in that market you probably might think twice about investing," said Leonard Levin, a tax attorney at New York accounting firm Weiser.

All of this underlines the fallacy of the government's growing obsession with the rejected ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. Mary Harney was right in 2000 to describe Ireland as "closer to Boston than Berlin", and the no vote was in part a reflection of that. Since the birth of the Celtic Tiger (which was conceived by the reforms of 1987 and 1989-92), our political elite in the cocoon on Kildare St has been feeding us a false narrative that seeks to attribute the boom to the European Union. This is a false narrative and now more than ever deserves to be challenged. Where was Brussels when we needed them over the Government's deposit-account guarantee scheme? The reality is that at a time when their judgement is being tested more than ever over the economy, Fianna Fáil and the Greens need a distraction, and their 'jihad' to foist Lisbon on the Irish people looks as good as any in terms of attempting to keep the recession (or as increasingly looks likely a Depression) off the frontpages. In this, they have been unsuccessful, but with Fianna Fáil on 25% in the latest TNS-MRBI Irish Times opinion-poll, a kitchen-sink strategy has obviously been decided upon. The incessant smear-campaign against Libertas founder and anti-Lisbon campaigner Declan Ganley has been the hallmark of a Government campaign against the wishes of its own people. Devoid of understanding and in some cases even of readership of the contents of the Treaty, they have resorted to playing the man and not the ball. As the recent visit to Ireland by the Czech President has shown, they are prepared to stretch legality to its very limits by restricting access for the Irish media to the dinner attended with members of the Government. The Czech media, on the other hand, were allowed in. Is this the kind of freedom the media and the Irish people can expect under the Charter of Fundamental Rights which would be enshrined into European law under the Lisbon Treaty, should it be ratified? Was it for this our forefathers died in 1916 and the War of Independence? Did they die so that a foreign-dominated European Court of Justice could overrule the Irish Supreme Court on all matters of fundamental human-rights (through the Charter) ranging from capital-punishment for rebellion against the EU, free-legal aid to illegal-immigrants appealing against their deportations (Article 47), the right to remain illegally in a member state (Article 21), the potential reopening of the Irish-born child loophole closed in the 2004 Citizenship referendum (Article 24), the prevention of criminals being tried again after acquittal even if new evidence as to their guilt comes to light (Article 50), the right to strike (Article 28)? I think not. Keep Ireland free and in control of its destiny. Welcome those - like President Klaus, who would stand with the Irish people against imperial encroachments by the Big States, and stand up to those, like Sarkozy and Merkel, who want us to 'vote again' until we give them the 'right answer' that even President Sarkozy's own people wouldn't give him in the 2005 referendum on the EU Constitution. The answer is still no.

Republicans preparing to steal election?

2008-10-25T17:11:00.000-07:00

Peruse the diagram to your left. The green/yellow states are those voting with DREs with a voter-verified paper-trail (VVPR) (except in Tennessee, Colorado and Maryland where the relevant legislation has been passed but doesn't come into force this year) and with/without (respectively) a paper audit-trail. The red-states are those requiring neither a paper-audit-trail nor a voter verified paper-trail. As with the other 3 GOP presidential election victories won by fraud, I firmly believe from my research that they are doing it again. The Help America Vote Act 2002 strongarms states into using e-voting machines that make voterigging easier and does not require a paper trail. Diebold, producers of the infamous touchscreens that they admit drop votes when uploaded to a database in highly populated areas i.e. Democrat areas, have cynically changed their name to Premier Election Solutions. The Ohio official responsible for running elections in the state, Democrat Jennifer Brunner, tried to get the GOP-controlled state legislature to agree to move from touchscreens to optical scanners that count paper ballots and a centralised state voter register, but they said no. My opinion of John McCain has worsened because of his negative campaign, and of the way his party is using George Wallace-tactics to disenfranchise democrats. It's hard to believe Lincoln would approve. At this stage I believe McCain would not win a fair election if US public opinion stays as indicated by polls, but I believe that he may win by fraud. On the Russia-Georgia issue and criticism of Putin's record on human-rights yes. But what has come to light regarding fraud and the negative personalised campaign has forced a rethink. Let him practice what he preaches, and decide whether he wants to be cmdr-in-chief or cmdr-in-cheat. Fraud is most likely to occur in states using DRE (touchscreen voting machines), especially those without VVPAT (Voter verified paper audit trail). From my research, the swing states most vulnerable to vote-flipping fraud are Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania, as most counties in these states use touchscreens without VVPAT. The diagram below (dark/green=paper-ballots/mixed paper-ballots/DREs with VVPAT, yellow = DREs with VVPAT, pink = mixed paper-ballots and DREs with and without VVPAT, orange = mixed paper-ballot systems with and DREs without VVPAT, red = DREs without VVPAT and light-blue =mechanical lever machines and accessible ballot marking devices), shows which states are using DREs, with and without paper-audit trails. Already reports are spreading in states using the ES+S DREs of votes for Obama being flipped to McCain, and of votes for Democrats flipping to Republicans further down the ticket.

In West Virginia the vote-flipping scandal, initially seemingly confined to one county, is now spreading to other counties and states. Having started in Jackson county, and is now spreading to Puttnam and Martinsburg counties, and even South Carolina, Texas and Tennessee: In West Virginia, voter Nancy Roe said she clicked on all her choices --- including two candidates for Bluffton Town Council. But when she reviewed her selections before actually casting the ballot, she noticed that her two picks for the Bluffton Town Council did not register. Her husband had the same problem.With the assistance of a Hilton Head employee, the two attempted to re-cast their ballots. Again, it didn't work.They resolved the problem by casting paper ballots for the council race, Nancy Roe said."I'm real political, so I checked the ballot," she said. "If I had only given it a quick glance and punched 'vote,' I never would've known." The Charleston Gazette is reporting “Some early W.Va. voters angry over switched votes....three West Virginia voters complained that touch-screen machines in one county clerk’s office kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.On Thursday, the Gazette reported that despite the problems in her state, Republican West Virginia Secretary of State Betty Ireland, who selected the Omaha, Neb.-based ES&S machines, issued a response that she has confidence “the machines will provide West Virginia with a fair, accurate and clean election.”. ES&S spokesperson Ken Fields told the Mineral Wells Index by phone Thursday.“In each case, when they notified a poll worker, the poll worker was able to help voters select and ultimately cast their vote,” he added.“Every voter is required to review their selection. Voters have to review and confirm that the machine is highlighting the selection they intended,” he added, calling the machine’s ballot review process, “an important element and one more assurance that every voter can have.”“There was no indication there was any problem with the machines,” Fields concluded about the West Virginia machines. He further pointed out that the iVotronic machines have a paper backup and said each machine is “rigorously tested by independent testing experts” before leaving the company and calibrated and tested before each election. Jones said she spoke with Smith about the problems with the machine she used at the Palo Pinto County Courthouse.“Bobbie was upset at the situation when she called back,” said Jones. “She told me, ‘We had all kinds of trouble the last time we used these machines.’ She said she would call the vendor right away and they will come fix it.”“I said, ‘You need to stop using that machine right now,’” Jones added."

Some might be tempted, from ideological bias or complacency, to believe that this problem is localised and not representative of what will happen nationally, but I beg to differ. —At least two Palo Pinto County, Texas residents say they too experienced early voting problems when the touch-screen voting machines they used kept switching their straight-party vote from Democratic to Republican.“When I cast an early vote Wednesday at Palo Pinto County Courthouse, my vote was switched from Democrat to Republican right in front of my face — twice,” reported Lona Jones, a Precinct 1 county resident.Intending to vote straight party on the Democratic ticket, Jones said she was surprised Wednesday when the electronic voting machine “on the left as you face the machines” in the courthouse basement asked her if she wanted to cast her vote for a straight Republican ticket.Thinking she had pushed the wrong button the first time the machine “came up Republican,” Jones said she repeated her intended straight-party vote.“The second time I was sure to just touch the Democratic button,” she said, further reporting that the machine responded to her selection, “’Do you want to change your Republican straight ticket vote to a Democratic vote?’ I pressed, ‘Yes,’ then it came back up and it was a total Republican ticket again.”One election judge helped her cancel her vote and switch her to the machine on the right side, where she was able to cast her vote as she intended.“One of the ladies told me, ‘These machines don’t work well’ and, ‘These machines give us problems.’ I told her I not only didn’t want to use that machine, indicating the problematic first machine, I didn’t want anyone using that machine.”When Jones returned home, she made calls — first to County Clerk Bobbie Smith who was out of the office conducting early voting in Mineral Wells — then to other elected officials. In Tennessee some voters even claimed that the ES+S DREs even switched their votes the other way around - from McCain to Obama. But there's no escaping the fact that 99% of the time with these e-voting glitches, it's the Democrats who are suffering, and that can only give rise to understandible, and probably justified, suspicions that once more, the GOP are stealing an election.

In my personal opinion, as a former enthusiast for electronic-voting here in Ireland, these revelations should not be used - as many inevitably will - to bash the principle of introducing e-voting here in Ireland. If there are lessons to be learned from this debacle for us in Ireland, it is surely that the counting of the votes, and the management of the elections themselves, needs to be divorced from partisan political-figures, something that is manifestly not the case in the US. The rigging of American elections arguably handed the presidency to 3 Republicans (Rutherford B Hayes, Benjamin Harrison and probably George W Bush too). As the former two elections, in 1876 and 1886 obviously precede electronic-voting, it cannot, on its own, be blamed for the unhappy tradition of voter disenfranchisement and suppression in the United States. But it certainly proves Lenin's maxim that what matters is who counts, rather than who votes, in an election. The number of counties in the swing states using the ES+S DRE voting-machines are as follows: Colorado: 2, Indiana: 16 (10 as backups), Ohio: 9 (1 as backups), Pennsylvania: 23 (1 backup), West Virginia: 41 (9 backups), Virginia: 5, Wisconsin: 2 as backups, North Carolina: 37. And this doesn't even include the innumerable number counties using ES+S optical-scanners that 'count' paper-ballots. Of course voter-fraud is not confined to countries using e-voting. But it certainly becomes much easier without an audit-trail, and in Pennsylvania, much of Virginia and Indiana, there will be none in this election. The election could be stolen and the probability of it being proven in court is infinitessimal. The American electoral-system is dominated by elected Secretaries of State in 49 of the 50 states, who are normally elected. In the case of West Virginia, Texas and South Carolina, the 3 states referred to in paragraph one, the holders of that position, Betty Ireland, Hope Andrade and Mark Hammond respectively, are all Republicans, just like Katharine Harris in the scandalous 2000 US Presidential Election in Florida. The Help America Vote (Republican?) Act 2002, puts these kinds of officials more in the driving-seat of elections at state-level by requiring them to centralise electoral-registers at state level. In Ohio, which no Republican has been elected president without winning, the Republicans are trying to bully the Democratic Secretary of State to throw 200,000 supposedly 'potentially fraudulent' voters off the register. The House Minority Leader, John Boehner, has written a leader calling for the US Justice Department to investigate the 200,000 registrations. So we shouldn't be too surprised if Bush intervenes to try to force Secretary Brunner to submit to the GOP's demands. Anecdotal evidence suggests many of the registrants that do not match federal records are not fraudulent by a result of misspellings. In Montana, a state GOP official challenged nearly 6,000 voters living in Democratic strongholds who filed change of address forms with the U.S. Postal Service. Registrations must contain current addresses. After the Montana Democratic Party filed a federal lawsuit challenging the request, the state party backed down. In Michigan, the Democratic National Committee and the Obama campaign sued the Michigan and Macomb County Republican parties after learning of an alleged Republican plan to use foreclosure addresses to keep some residents who've failed to update their address from voting. The suit was settled last week and the information will not be used. But clearly the GOP is going back to its old tricks of trying to disenfranchise minority-voters - especially African-Americans - 90% of whom vote Democratic in presidential elections. Given the disaster of Iraq and impending war with Iran, the Republicans disdain for the fight against global-warming, and the importance to the survival of Western democracy of a fair election in the United States, the world can but hope this time they are not successful.

EU seeks to silence Libertas

2008-09-25T22:57:00.000-07:00

In a mixed couple of weeks for democrats in Ireland and Europe increasingly concerned by the decline of democracy in Europe, there was much to give rise for concern. On the one hand, the rejection by European Parliament of the original text of the Parliament's Education and Culture Committee that would have effectively set in motion regulation, registration and ultimately censorship of political-blogs gave one brief hope that Brussels was coming to its senses. Such hopes were dashed by the decision by the leaders of the main EP political-groups to tell an EP delegation to ask the US Congress to disclose rumoured-Libertas funding in the US. According to Judith Crosbie in the Irish Times, "The European Parliament is to ask the US Congress about US fundraising for anti-Lisbon Treaty lobby group Libertas and will set up links with the Irish watchdog on referendum spending. The leaders of the parliament's political groups decided to take the action after MEPs raised concerns during a parliament session over alleged US funding regarding Ireland's referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. MEPs are concerned about the prospect of Libertas launching a campaign across the EU for next year's European parliamentary elections, as suggested by the group's chairman, Declan Ganley. The parliament has yet to decide whether its delegation to the Congress should visit the US to discover any information it may have on US fundraising or exchange letters on the matter. Graham Watson, leader of the parliament's Liberal group, said he supported contacting Congress because such contacts had proved useful when discovering the source of IRA funding in the US. The European Parliament wants to tell Ireland's Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) of information it might have of a European nature on Libertas funding. "We will be establishing links with Sipo. Anything gleaned from Europe, we'll send over to them," said an official. The parliament's leaders would "regularly and closely monitor the situation and return to the issue, in any event, in the light of any conclusion by Sipo or other Irish authorities", said a statement". Brian Crowley, Fianna Fáil MEP for Munster, said he told the other group leaders that Sipo was the appropriate body to examine Libertas's funding. Kathy Sinnott, independent MEP for Munster and leader of the parliament's independence/ Democracy group, said the delegation to the US could do better things than inquire about Libertas funding."

After the humiliation of seeing our politicians cowtow to Europe following our no vote by largely refusing to rule out either a rerun of a referendum on an identical text to the rejected Lisbon Treaty, or (Enda Kenny and Fine Gael being an honorable exception to this rule) parliamentary ratification of parts of Lisbon in the Houses of the Oireachtas, we can at least say that in the matter of Libertas funding, that the fact that not all our elected representatives have associated themselves with this latter-day Inquisition directed at dissent towards the Lisbon-model of European integration will be a source of relief, but the parties here are certainly not united in such a stance. Hardly a day goes by without Europe Minister Dick Roche muttering menacingly about the 'shadowy' origins of Libertas and its supposed links to the US military, most recently with respect to contracts in Alaska. The controversy surrounding Ganley's company, Rivada Networks, began during the Lisbon campaign, with vague accusations from the pro-Treaty side about links to neocons and the US military. What was not mentioned was the nature of these links, which pertained to emergency-disaster relief such as in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - hardly relevant to the foreign policy of George W Bush. Despite an almost one-dimensional fixation with the finances and activities of Declan Ganley's company and Libertas, Roche and the yes side have failed to make anything stick where he is concerned. The latest from Roche's website refers to what is described as a "loophole" in American Federal Procurement legislation "that allows military contractor's such as Rivada Networks Ltd to get contracts without any form of public competitive tendering, hardly an advertising and for either accountability or transparency. ". Someone should perhaps tell Minister Roche that if something is not illegal then it is not a crime, and that given SIPO has revealed his party to have only disclosed where 13% of its money is coming from, that perhaps his party should cease inhabiting an ethical-glass house before throwing stones. For the disclosure threshold beyond which donations to political-parties must be revealed is itself a loophole, and as such going by Roche's standards is also " hardly an advertising and for either accountability or transparency.". If you're going to talk the talk Minister, then your party should also walk the walk or Dún do bhéal.

But that should not let them off the hook. Having failed to defend Irish sovereignty either in the negotiations on the Lisbon treaty themselves, the subsequent referendum and in the case of most of the "Yes" parties their reaction to the brave Irish rejection of the Treaty on June 12th, they must now show themselves worthy not only in letter but also in spirit of the accolades of being the representatives of the people. For it is debatable whether the current complexion of Dail Éireann would be as now had last year's General Election been held in the aftermath of that no vote. Defenders of the thesis of representative as opposed to direct-democracy, including Irish Times writers Ruth Barrington and Stephen Collins argue that Oireachtas ratification of at least parts of the Treaty despite the rejection of the referendum by the Irish people is not undemocratic, as representative-democracy as embodied by national parliaments is an equally legitimate expression of democracy. But I beg to differ. Each EU member state has its own respective model of democracy. It is the norm across Europe that except in exceptional cases pertaining to national sovereignty and other areas, national parliaments can ratify treaties as they see fit - if in some cases - such as where national constitutions may be impinged on - this requires weighted rather than simple-majorities. But in the Irish context, direct-democracy has been an intrinsic and I believed highly-prized core principle of our democratic-model since 1937. It's detractors would do well to recall the fate of the Scottish Parliament of 1707, the Irish Parliament in 1800, and the French National Assembly in 1940, before recommending handing our politicians the constitutional blank-cheque such an absolutist adherance to "representative democracy" would give to them. For it was the 1937 Constitution that saved the liberties of the Irish people on scores of occasions over the past 71 years. As a constitution that was largely the workmanship of Fianna Fáil, it ill behoves Mary O'Rourke to be advocating circumvention of the result of the referendum that was ultimately a product of that Constitution. It's less surprising to hear such calls coming from Fine Gael figures like Senator Eugene Regan, who called for Oireachtas ratification with the intrument of a referendum being confined to issues such as the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Indeed it's ironic that it seems to be the leadership of Fianna Fáil, rather than Fine Gael, that seems the more inclined towards legislative ratification. It was, after all, Fine Gael that was the great defender of the 1922 Constitution, with its elitist proviso that constitutional amendments would be the prerogative of the Oireachtas to the exclusion of the prior requirement for binding referenda. In contrast, it is Enda Kenny, rather than Brian Cowen, that is courageously and stoutly defend the prerogative invested in the people by the 1937 Constitution that gives them a veto on constitutional changes or the transfer of sovereignty to supranational institutions. Can it be, following the Varadkar proposals on voluntary repatriation and the more positive proactive positioning of the party in support of the long-overdue reform of the public-sector, that Fine Gael is finally on the long road to making itself electable as a credible alternative party of government? I think so.

Demise of PDs an opportunity for Fine Gael/Libertas

2008-09-17T10:20:00.000-07:00

The death of the Progressive Democrats, long envisaged for 23 years, has finally arrived. Last night's by all accounts emotional PD meeting to discuss the future of the party merely gave a stay of execution until October. It would seem that the party's four Oireactas members (Harney, Grealish, O'Malley and Cannon) were more at one on winding down the party than its councillors. But the party has lost prominent councillors in just over a year since the General Election, during which the party sailed rudderless for most of that time. With Mary Harney rejecting the poison-chalice of returning to the leadership she vacated in 2006 in favour of McDowell, and with such a long interregnum in a party none of its elected members wanted to lead, it is evidence that the viability of the party was gone, as was the stomach for the fight needed to soldier on in the context of a party-system that has. since 1921, frustrated all attempts by microparties to survive the tribal-pulls of the Civil War parties and, to a lesser extent, Labour. Indeed Labour itself came quite close to extinction in 1987, scoring only 5% of the FPV, but managed to hold only 12 seats, but which left it the fourth largest party in Dail Eireann until the PD's disasterous performance in the 1989 General Election, when its 14 seats were reduced to 6. It was always ironic that except in 2002, the PDs entered government when they lost seats, while departing it when they gained seats. And yet, given what has transpired last year and since, it is perhaps reasonable to assume that there are a lot of "what ifs" now echoeing in the minds of PD activists. What if Mary Harney had not re-entered government with Fianna Fáil in 2002? What if Des O'Malley had not announced his support for Mary Harney while Pat Cox was in Vienna? What if Liz O'Donnell had succeeded her, rather than the polarising Michael McDowell? What if they hadn't botched the 1997 manifesto launch on downsizing the public-sector and helping single-mothers who wanted to remain in the home? These questions are of course academic at one level, but they may also contain important lessons for other microparties that emerge, as they occasionally do (like Clann na Poblachta/Talamhan, Farmers Party etc.) about the balance to be struck between principle and power.

The fault for the demise of the PDs can only partly be laid at their door. Entering govt in 2002 when FF didn't need them and when their ability to implement their economic agenda (especially the wideranging privatisation in the 2002 manifesto) was almost nonexistent was a terrible mistake. They chose non-economic portfolios which changed how they were identified by the public from being associated with economic growth to the failings in our justice system and health-service instead. They allowed themselves to become FF's mudguards. FF treated their proposals for cafe-bars with open contempt, and procrastination on Aer Lingus privatisation for four years. McDowell alienated 2 sources of transfers before the 2007 election - FG voters annoyed that they didn't pull out of govt over Bertiegate, and FF voters annoyed that they showed signs of being unsure of whether to remain in govt with FF. FF voters are historically reluctant to transfer to parties perceived as hostile to FF. Much - though by no means all - of their economic agenda has been poached by FF and FG e.g. income tax cuts, some privatisation (though nothing on the scale the PDs wanted). This combined with the other factors helped these parties ween some "soft" PD voters back to those parties who were usually their natural political-homes anyway. A hate campaign in most of the print media - notably the Star. Part of this was a vendetta against McDowell for defeating them in the Citizenship referendum, while part of it was that the anti-FF press saw the PDs as the weakest link, whose destruction would prevent FF remaining in govt. Many microparties had their moment of glory at around 10% before fizzling out over a 20 yr or so period. The end of the Northern conflict undermined their appeal to voters attracted to anti-Sinn Féin rhetoric, while the Good Friday Agreement, supported by all the Dail parties, meant that the PDs were no longer offering a unique stance on the Northern conflict. Ironically, in this respect the party was a victim of its own success. As someone who voted for Colm O'Gorman in 2007, I have to say that I was nonetheless disappointed with the party-manifesto that year. Where was the far-reaching programme of privatisation of the 2002 campaign (including ESB and Bord Gáis)? And why is Harney trying to push through Risk Equalisation payments by the VHI's competitors in the health-insurance industry - something that surely flies in the face of the competition that the party always claimed to stand for? After the surrender to Fianna Fáil over café-bars, it looked to many voters that the party no longer represented something distinct enough from Fianna Fáil to be worth supporting. To paraphrase Michael McDowell they lost their radicalism and so became redundant.

The Left are already toasting the death of the party they love to hate. Fergus Finlay, who coined the phrase about talks with Sinn Féin not being "worth a penny candle", told George Hook on Newstalk that it was "good riddance" to the PDs, despite his admiration for some of its figures like Des O'Malley. SF Cavan-Monaghan TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said "We may be witnessing the dying days of the Progressive Democrats and truly progressive people in Ireland will shed no tears over their demise.". But maybe they are celebrating too soon. It is arguable that what was rejected in 2007 was not neo-liberal economics per se, but rather the failure of PD ministers to implement them in their portfolios at Justice and Health. An Irish Independent poll published shortly before the election found a small plurality in favour of hospital-colocation. But Harney's laudible plan has taken an eternity to get off the ground, and still has not really done so in a major way. She will probably be remembered as the woman who sacrificed her party for the overriding goal of health-service reform, but there are questions to be asked as to why it took four years to negotiate a new consultants' contract, and whether it would have been delivered quicker in Coalition with a weaker Fianna Fáil that actually depended on the PD's for survival in government. No. What was rejected in 2007 was not neo-liberal economics, of which the only real element in the party manifesto was cuts in the bottom and marginal-rates of income-tax. to 38% and 19%. The reasons for the rejection of the PDs had nothing to do with economics, and everything to do with the poaching of their ideology on taxation, the lack of health-service reform, the inheritance of the mistakes of previous Fianna Fáil health-ministers in that department (including nursing-home charges) but which were blamed on Harney, notably by the vicious cartoon in the Irish Star portraying Harney as digging up a graveyard to make the dead pay for their nursing-home charges. The reality is that no party was really offering a neo-liberal platform to the electorate last year. McDowell seemed to vacillate between supporting the re-election of the Coalition with Fianna Fáil on the one hand, and supporting withdrawl on the other hand, and voters do not like feeling that their differing motives for voting for or transferring to a party are being manipulated for party-advantage. They saw through McDowell's spin, and while the party did not deserve what happened to it perhaps the leadership did. But there is still, I believe, a gap in the Irish electoral-market for an economically liberal party, and I trust in time it will arrive, whether in the form of a continuing shift to the Right in Fine Gael (signs of which include Richard Bruton's plan for a quango cull), along with support for an immigration policy that is fair but firm. The question is whether Labour would play a similar role to that of the Fianna Fáil statists since 2004 by stymying an attempt Thatcherisation of the Irish economy? In that context, I think the future of Libertas, with its support for economic freedom and the defence of democracy in the European Union, may be crucial in determining the future electoral-landscape in a state and electoral-system in which the politically-small is sometimes the beautiful. At a time when the public-finances are €6 billion in debt, the cost and inefficiency of the bloated public-sector, with monopolies spanning the electricity, to the gas, and bus-sectors, are again coming under the media-radar, notably in the Irish Independent which recently called for a large privatisation programme that could raise €8 billion euros. As we approach October's emergency-budget, it is imperative that Minister Lenihan remove this albatross from around the necks of the private-sector taxpayer. If he fails to do so, then others may have to offer the country the transition from Big to Small Government that it desperately needs in these choppy economic-waters.

66% want immigration clampdown - poll

2008-09-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

The Irish Examiner leads today with a poll on immigration, which it says shows conflicting atttitudes by the Irish people to immigration and integration. The poll, by Amarach Research,was conducted last week among a sample of 1,000 adults in the Republic. The poll finds that 66% believe we need tighter controls on immigration. Despite the call for a clampdown, 54% believe the country’s decade-long experience of mass migration has been good for the republic, with one in three saying it has had a negative impact. Almost six in 10 people, 59%, think the Government is not doing enough to integrate the new Irish, while 72% are worried about the impact immigration is having on the health service. A further 65% expressed similar concerns regarding education. 38% of respondents believe a future taoiseach or president of the republic will emerge from the descendents of immigrants, with 33% disagreeing. according to the survey of 1,000 people, conducted by Amárach Research. In it's editorial entitled "Integration of immigrants - A positive experience", the Examiner argues that "This period of immigration coincided with a period of unprecedented wealth, opportunity and nearly full employment. As everyone knows, those circumstances no longer apply and as unemployment levels rise there is a potential for tension. Our attitude towards immigrants may be about to face a sterner test than before.". The poll also shows a significant class, gender and age divide on the issue. Dubliners, higher earners and the middle-aged were more likely to suggest immigrants were integrated. 42 per cent were "a little worried" about immigration's effect on the education system compared to 35 per cent being "not at all worried", and 23 per cent "extremely worried". Asked about the health service, 39 per cent said they were"a little worried", 28 per cent not worried and 33 per cent "extremely worried". 48% of females said immigration was a good thing and 37 per cent a bad thing, with 58 per cent of men saying it is a good thing, and 30 per cent a bad thing. Women are less positive about the effect of immigration than men. Coincidentally, the Irish Examiner quotes more of the artificial hysteria of Fianna Fáil in condemning the proposals of FG Enterprise Spokesman and Dublin West TD that the State should fund the return of foreign-nationals to their home countries because of the economic recession. While the proposal was condemned by Thomas Byrne (FF) TD, who called it a "new low" and called for it to be withdrawn, it marks the beginning of what I hope will be a trend which, together with recent proposals on reform of the public-sector will make FG a viable alternative to a FF-led govt. Being more in touch with public-opinion on issues like this is an important part of being taken seriously as a viable alternative-govt party. Varadkar should stand his ground, and FG should back him up. It is not a racist proposal, but rather one that recognises that charity begins at home, and that a recession is not the right time to be exacerbating the difficulties Irish people face in finding work. For those of us - myself included - who oppose racism, it is recognised that the current free-for-all of unregulated mass-immigration are in fact risking strengthening it. Let us oppose racism through tighter controls, so as to avoid the circumstances such as job displacement which fuel it.

Sadly, the early signs point to the Establishment continuing to demonise those who attempt to quite legitimately debate the question of immigration-control and measures to protect the Irish labour-market in the context of skyrocketing unemployment - something that certainly calls into question the prospects for the survival of freedom of speech in this country. Integration Minister Conor Lenihan has accused Fine Gael TDs of attempting to create a “climate of resentment” against people who have come to Ireland to work.Mr Lenihan’s comments follow a call by Fine Gael TD Leo Varadkar for the Government to consider paying immigrant workers a lump sum payment of up to six months' worth of unemployment benefit if they agree to return home. “Leo Varadkar’s comments about migrants before a Dáil Committee are designed to create a climate of resentment against people who have come to Ireland to work,” Mr Lenihan said. He said statements had been issued by Fine Gael deputies in recent months that were of “huge concern” to him and that were “inflammatory and aimed at boosting their own profile at the expense of often vulnerable immigrants”. “The comments by Deputy Varadkar as a member of the Opposition front bench mark a new low in Irish politics and all the more so given that it appears to be a co-ordinated effort on migrant issues by Fine Gael,” the Minister said. Labour TD Sean Sherlock said Mr Varadkar's remarks were "nothing short of outrageous" and an "unwelcome lurch towards the far right" by Fine Gael. "Immigration has increased the population of Ireland, and in so doing, has increased demand for goods and services in this country, contributing in no small way to generating the economic prosperity we enjoyed in recent years," he said. Mr Varadkar asked the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment whether there was an opportunity to give three to six months' unemployment benefit to unemployed foreign nationals to encourage them to return to their own countries. In Spain, unemployed foreign nationals from 20 countries have been offered €18,000 to go home on condition they do not come back for three years. The Fine Gael TD’s remarks were described during the meeting as "very, very dangerous" by Fianna Fáil Meath TD Thomas Byrne, who said "voluntary repatriation is a new low by Fine Gael". Later, Mr Byrne said: "This comes in the dishonourable tradition of the British National Party. They are the only other party supporting voluntary repatriation." The number of such workers in Ireland is now 16 per cent of the total on the Live Register - exactly proportional to the numbers in the workforce.

So yet again, the opportunity to have a rational debate on the challenges of immigration is cast aside in favour of the failed mantra of "multiculturalism" and the portrayal of all foreign-nationals as victims (especially through their being termed "vulnerable") by the windbags of Leinster House. It is a sad situation that we are being denied a debate on the biggest societal change on this island for 400 years. Most of us are opposed to racism, and certainly that includes myself. But surely experience in other parts of Western Europe underlines the fact that racism tends to increase in a context where debate on the issue is closed down via self-censorship and the blind adherance to failed mantras and political-correctness. For example, I bring your attention to recent race-riots and gang warfare in the UK. Multiculturalism's defenders claim it will create a progressive society where the tolerance of cultural identity provides equality and opportunity for all. Positive discrimination within public institutions is supposed to engineer a change in attitudes, and result in a society comfortable with diversity. But in the UK, these practices have become divisive, creating animosity within the indigenous population. Former Tory politician, Matthew Parris of The Times has questioned the wisdom of culturally divided communities living side by side, and the natural inequalities and conflict this will naturally create. Divided ethnic communities where economic prosperity is in short supply, are always going to compete for wealth, and this competition will on occasion spill over into violence. The evidence from the UK disproves the Left's contention that multiculturalism reduces racism. Socially liberal multiculturalists will argue that inherent racism in society limits the opportunities of ethnic minorities, but surely multiculturalism “ by encouraging cultural division“ cements such attitudes. So if we are to make immigration a success it is right we should question the ethos of multiculturalism, which it could be argued is failing to create equality and social harmony. Many ethnic minority children are being failed by multiculturalism which undermines the social cohesion and productivity. Why are Indian children 20% more likely to succeed at school than Pakistani or Black children? Why is such inequality so evident after decades of the multicultural experiment? Holding up the richness and value of a culture is all well and good, but not when it's at the cost of unity and collective prosperity. Dianne Ravitch, the conservative US scholar and author, has argued that the celebration of Multiculturalism masks liberal/intellectual hostility towards the mainstream. While it took 50 years for the ethnic-minority populations of the UK and Germany to reach what I call critical-mass (10%+), it has happened in Ireland in a mere 10 years. In that context, it is important for the political-elites to wake up and recognise that if we are not to repeat the mistakes of previous countries of mass-immigration with respect to the labour market, multiculturalism, integration and unsustainable pressure on public-services, we must act now, rather than marching blindly into the abyss seen in France and the UK in the streets of Paris and Brixton. Those of us who oppose racism must ensure that our immigration policy reflects the needs of the Irish people and economy - not the leftist ideology that seeks to replace nations with "citizens of the world", or the fatcats for whom anti-racism is merely a flag of convenience behind which to hide an agenda that is actually racist because it exploits cheap foreign labour through a race to the bottom in pay and conditions, undermining both workers' rights and race-relations. We have hard realities we have to face, and the longer it takes for us to do so, the greater the risk that we repeat the mistakes of history.

Return of the evil empire

2008-08-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

In a week when the news-networks have been dominated by harrowing scenes of civilian suffering in the ongoing Russian-Georgian conflict over the separatist region of South Ossetia. There are shades of the Sudetenland crisis in 1938, when Hitler, on the pretext of defending a 'persecuted' German minority in that region of Czechoslovakia, was appeased and allowed to annex it, followed by the conquest of the entire country 6 months later. Russia is seeking Anschluss with Russocentric regions in its former Soviet empire. As an Irish nationalist, I have mixed feelings on this matter. While anxious that Russia must not be appeased, I instinctively sympathise with nationalities seeking to go their own way in an historic homeland. Even so, I think the merits of their independence-bids are not universally clear to those with a knowledge of the history of the South Ossettian and Abkhazian conflicts which have led to 2 Russian puppet-states on internationally-recognised Georgian soil.

Abkhazia seems undeserving of independence, given that its pro-independence demographic is a creation of ethnic-cleansing of Georgians - before the 1992-4 war 46% of the population and a majority in the capital Sukhumi - resulting in the Abkhaz, who were never a majority in the region, becoming the largest ethnic-group. The 1989 census said that the Abkhaz were 18% of the population, whereas now they are closer to 40% according to the 2003 census. Around 190,000 ethnic-Georgians were expelled and 15,000 massacred by Abkhaz, pro-Moscow militias and probably Russian troops too. The Sukhumi massacre was a gruesome attocity against the ethnic-Georgians. The late Russian journalist Dmitry Kholodov, later assassinated on a suspected contract-killijng for investigating corruption in the Russian military, witnessed the massacre and reported seeing the following: "They captured a young girl. She was hiding in the bushes near the house where they killed her parents. She was raped several times. One of the soldiers killed her and mutilated her. She was cut in half. Near her body they left a message: as this corpse will never be as one piece, Abkhazia and Georgia will never be united either." They could not have driven the Georgians out without massive military-aid from Moscow, which connived to help the separatists. It treacherously negotiated ceasefires in Sukhumi and Gagra in 1992 in which Georgian troops were promised the shelling of these cities would end if they left these cities. In fact they were stormed by the separatists and massacres ensued in which thousands of Georgians were butchered - some of them, ironically, by Chechen militia led by Shamil Basayev - the later mastermind of the Beslan massacre and prominent Chechen separatist rebel in the wars that began in Chechnya in 1994. So to grant Abkhazia international recognition as an independent state would be to reward ethnic-cleansing and should be unacceptable to the international community. The Georgian refugees expelled in the 1990's must be allowed return and then perhaps take part in a referendum on independence. But the existing yes votes cannot stand, considering their basis in ethnic-cleansing and their non-recognition by the international community, and their defiance of UNSC resolutions respecting Georgia's territorial integrity. Abkhazia's place in Georgia goes back to the ancient kingdom of Colchis, with a break during the independent kingdom of Abkhazia, which nonetheless may have been a primarily ethnic-Georgian kingdom, judging by the names of its kings. It was reunited with Georgia by marriage.

On South Ossetia, the Ossetians have been a majority since at least 1926, with a 26% Georgian minority prior to this conflict. But the Georgian claim on the territory is legitimate in moral terms because they were there first and the Ossetians migrated to SO in the 1300's following expulsion from parts of European Russia by the Mongols. In any case, North Ossetia, a Russian republic, has 10 times the Ossetian population, and as such the Ossetians already have a homeland (considering they don't want independence and have always been remarkably loyal to Russia). There is evidence that pro-Russian militia are ethnic-cleansing Georgian villages according to Human Rights Watch. I do not agree with the Georgian military-intervention here, and regard it as them falling into Russia's carefully laid trap. Russian troops have poured into the region since the NATO summit in Bucharest that refused to give Georgia and Ukraine a date for admission to the alliance. Furthermore, the Russians have been intermittently bombing parts of Georgia in a previously unsuccessfull attempt to provoke Tbilisi. Now Russia has the excuse it needs to meddle in Georgian affairs with something approaching an occupation. As with Abkhazia, the old pattern of ethnic-cleansing, destruction and looting of ethnic-Georgian villages in South Ossetia seems to be repeating itself. Human Rights Watch claims that it witnessed the destruction of the four Georgian villages of Kekhvi, Nizhnie Achaveti, Verkhnie Achaveti and Tamarasheni. In the village of Nizhnie Achaveti, Human Rights Watch researchers spoke to an elderly man who was desperately trying to rescue his smoldering house using two half-empty buckets of dirty water brought from a spring. He told Human Rights Watch that the vast majority of the residents, including his family, fled the village when active fighting between Georgian forces and South Ossetian militias broke out on August 8, but he decided to stay to look after the cattle. He said members of the South Ossetian militia came to his house on August 11, and tried to take away some household items. When he protested, they set the house on fire and left. The man said he had no food or drinking water; his hands were burned and hair was singed – apparently as he was unsuccessfully trying to extinguish the fire – and he appeared to be in a state of shock. He said that there were about five to ten elderly and sick people left in the village, all in a similar desperate condition, and many of the houses were burned.

Russian influence in the region has been the real winner here. The word has gone out that the US cannot be relied on to defend its non-NATO allies. This may well deter some from pursuing NATO membership and closer ties with the West, while in the case of the stronger Ukraine, it may cause them to push harder for it. Meanwhile the crucial Baku-Ceyhan-Tblisi oil pipeline, owned by BP and carrying 1 million barrels worth of oil a day from Azerbaijan to Turkey (before it was temporarily put out of action by a terrorist attack in Turkey) and on to the Mediterranean, risks falling into Russia's hands. A number of attempts were allegedly made by them to bomb it already. A crucial part of exerting leverage on Russia is to develop pipelines bypassing the country. Without Georgia, this strategy is dealt a crushing blow, as Armenia - occupying 20% of Azerbaijan in a war over the ethnic-Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabkah - is hardly going to help the Azeris sell their oil. One thing I would say to those naive enough to believe the Russians on their 'humanitarian' motives for intervention, is to remember the lack of concern by the Kremlin for Chechnya's right to self-determination and its destruction of Grozny and the litany of reports of genocide from the region since 1999, as well as the curious refusal in the Sarkozy peace-plan of Russia to agree to an amendment to Point 4 (on humanitarian agencies access to the region) that would have guaranteed the right of return of refugees to their homes. Today's Irish Independent carries a harrowing report of the ethnic-cleansing of Georgian villages in South Ossetia, where villagers were informed that Putin had ordered them to be expelled or killed. Does this tally with a Russia supposedly motivated in this crisis not by territorial ambition but rather by humanitarianism and concern for the self-determination of small nations? Not to me it doesn't, but judge for yourselves. The reality is that Russia has been deliberately stoking the separatist conflicts in its former Soviet republics in order to frustrate them from NATO membership and from forging closer links to the West.

Irish Times: "Ratify Lisbon regardless"

2008-08-06T05:50:00.000-07:00

It is with shock and concern that I read on August 2nd the Irish Times' political-correspondant Stephen Collins 'solution' to the Lisbon impasse. In a disturbing example of the elitism that dominates the Europhile perspective on how accountable the European project should be to the people it claims the right to govern, he calls for the government to ratify sections of the Treaty that might not contravene the Crotty judgement 1987, while putting the remaining issues to a referendum. That the same elite who derided the first no to Nice in 2001 on the grounds of its low turnout and used this to justify calls for a second referendum should now deride a no vote with a turnout of 53% - higher even than for Nice II - on the supposed basis that the people 'didn't understand it' - is a real and present irony in this debate. It also confirms the belief I have always held since I became aware of the contents of Lisbon and during my observations of the shocking reaction of the Brussels and Irish elite to the French and Dutch "no" votes to the EU Constitution - namely that the European project has lost its way, and is prepared to circumvent democracy and popular-consent in the name of "ever closer union". In this respect a parallel may perhaps be drawn with the Russian Duma elections of 1918 which Lenin refused to accept because his Bolsheviks only won 25% of the vote. Like Lenin, the Eurocrats and Irish elites believe that the people need to be guided by an oligarchy of constitutional revolutionaries towards "ever closer union" and should not have the final say on the evolution of the project of European integration. On the politics.ie website, I found it disturbing to find that Fine Gaeler NotDevsSon believes that as one of the most clued-in political-correspondants in the country, Collins' views likely reflected the thinking in the corridors of power in this country. What has Fianna Fáil come to if - as a party that Dev stated was founded to further Irish sovereignty and independence is now prepared to flout a democratic referendum result to end that sovereignty and independence? And if it is to be surrendered with the stroke of a pen, then what were 700 years of struggle for independence for? What did those heros die for if we are just going to give it away without so much of a whimper? I do not believe that the Irish people wish to do so, but as for most of the Leinster House set - well...

The premise of Collins' article is wrong. He states "Attempting to salvage Ireland's place in Europe and protect future generations from the disaster of the Lisbon defeat will be the supreme test of Taoiseach Brian Cowen. If a referendum cannot be won, the only solution is for the Dáil to find a way to ratify the essential nuts and bolts of the treaty, while allowing the electorate to vote again on the issues that caused such anxiety in the campaign. The Taoiseach will have to summon up the nerve and vision displayed by Seán Lemass when he dragged the country into the modern world in the early 1960s, against some of the most basic instincts of his own party and a large chunk of the electorate. History has vindicated Lemass's decision to abandon protectionism and embrace free trade and the wider world of Europe. Brian Cowen is now facing a challenge of similar proportions. The referendum defeat has launched Ireland down the slippery slope of a retreat from involvement in Europe and a return to the status of a being a client state of Britain. A second rejection of Lisbon would inevitably doom the country to that fate for generations to come...Of course the Government would also have political hell to pay for going the legislative route but it might not be nearly as bad as some Ministers think. After all the main reason given for voting No was that people didn't understand the treaty. In that case a good proportion of the electorate might be relieved if the Dáil took on the responsibility of dealing with it, rather than opting for another long drawn out and confused public debate about issues people cannot, or will not, understand."

The article trots out the usual "yes" mantra that the people "cannot..understand" issues put to them in referenda, and implies that we need an elite, who do "understand" these issues to make the decision for us - even if it runs counter to the peoples' decision. It is notable that Collins' seems to believe that it was only on the no side that there was misunderstanding or unawareness of the Treaty's contents. That this is not correct is confirmed by the recent Eurobarometer poll on the aftermath of the no vote, which confirmed that more than one-third of "yes" voters were motivated simply by the notion that 'EU membership has benefited Ireland', which self-evidently has nothing to do with the Treaty. The Treaty will determine our future, and the so-called Brussels "largesse", which was bought by the surrender of our fishing-industry to the vultures of the Common Fisheries Policy, is immaterial to the Lisbon debate. Further, Collins' claims that we will revert to "client" status vis a vis our relationship with the UK is ludicrous. Since 1972 the percentage of our exports going to the UK has fallen from 80% to around 21%. The thesis that were we outside of the EU that would reverse simply does not stand up to scrutiny. The Icelandic, Swiss and Norwegian economies are outside of the EU and have a free-trade agreement with it. The former has just 1% unemployment, while Norway's GDP per capita is similar to our own. Within a year of the French "no" vote to the European Constitution in 2005, FDI had doubled, while Dutch unemployment fell from 4% to 2% - the lowest in the EU. So while some may attempt to draw false causalities between the Irish "no" vote and the Irish recession, the reality is that this has been coming since the beginnings of the housing-slump in late 2006. Economist Moore McDowell has recently expressed the view on Newstalk106 that the recession began a year ago. Clearly, the reasons for the end of the Celtic Tiger stem primarily from domestic factors, such as the failure of the govt to take measures to cool down the overheating housing market e.g. allowing the developers an opt-out from Part V (on social and affordable housing), but I would also contend that the one-size-fits-all interest rate consequent on our membership of EMU, which kept interest-rates too low for too long, was also a factor. I am not advocating withdrawal from EMU. Indeed I strongly support the idea that we no longer have fluctuating exchange-rates between 15 different currencies - thus preventing a recurrence of the 1992 currency-crisis during which unemployment rose to 16% as exports were hammered. Nonetheless, we may need to revisit that aspect of EMU that imposes the strait-jacket of the single interest rate on us, and it ought to be a warning against what can happen when you blindly walk the constitutional-plank into the shark-infested waters of transferring too much power to the unelected bureaucrats of Brussels, Frankfurt and Luxembourg. Something I hope Collins and the Irish Times one day wakes up to. For Cowen to follow Collins' advice would be tantamount to a reversion to an 18th-19th century, Edmund Burke concept of Government, in which what the latter called "the swinish multitude" i.e. the common people, are increasingly kept at arms length by the "men of property", in terms of political-power. The men and women of 1916 surely did not die for this.