TDs criticise cardinal over failure to urge Yes on Lisbon

A CALL by the Catholic Church for a Yes vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum would have "got people's backs up" and could have made the rejection of the treaty even more likely, the Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady has said.

He has also questioned whether Irish people are ready for a more integrated EU.

Dr Brady was rebutting criticism from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs in relation to his failure to publicly endorse the treaty, at an Oireachtas committee on Ireland's future in Europe yesterday.

Fianna Fáil TD Beverley Flynn said the church had created a lot of uncertainty among Catholic voters in relation to the treaty.

"I believe the church should have come out definitively - I expected you to do that. You this week made a strong statement on same-sex marriages. I think there was an obligation on the church to make a strong statement on Lisbon."

Fine Gael's Billy Timmins said he found it hard to understand why the church felt it could not make a call on the treaty. "The cardinal has said the bishops didn't urge a No or a Yes vote. The church should not be afraid to enunciate a position."

Lucinda Creighton (FG) said she accepted that the church had made positive comments, but she would have liked a stronger statement of endorsement.

The church rarely directed people on how to vote unless there was a clear moral issue in question, and a strong statement in relation to the treaty might have been "counterproductive", Cardinal Brady said.

"A 100 per cent resounding call for a Yes vote, I think, would have got people's backs up," he said.

Cardinal Brady said that perhaps the idealism of the EU had been lost, and people saw the EU in terms of bureaucracy, legislation and economics, rather than in terms of social and human values.

"I wonder are we ready for the big step where it's one, large union now . . . We're not one people in Europe yet, far from it."

TDs also criticised the cardinal for allowing Alive! magazine - which advocated a No vote, suggesting that abortion would be more freely available if the treaty were passed - to be distributed in churches.

Labour's Joe Costello said the magazine "seemed to promote hatred of the European Union". Fine Gael's Paschal Donohoe said he was "hugely worried" about such literature being available in churches.

Cardinal Brady said Alive! was not a church publication but it had been distributed "without so much as a by your leave" to the church.