ANTHONY COUGHLAN,
Sir, - Proinsias De Rossa MEP accuses me (July 6th) of "an appeal to xenopobia" in my article on the Nice Treaty in your edition of June 24th. I wrote nothing there to justify this accusation.
Your July 6th edition also reports an apology and retraction by one of our national newspapers in the High Court for calling me a "communist". I am neither xenophobe nor communist. Can we not debate the Treaty of Nice without this name-calling?
I welcome the economic benefit and cultural enrichment immigrants bring to Irish society. I support the enlargement of the EU. I am enthusiastically in favour of all 10 applicant countries joining the EU if they do that, as Messrs Prodi and Giscard d'Estaing say they can, on the basis of their individual accession treaties rather than the Treaty of Nice.
Nice makes fundamental changes to the decision-making rules of the EU, to the detriment of the interests of the applicants and of smaller members like ourselves. If the applicant countries join the EU without Nice, they can then take part in revising those rules along with the present 15 EU members, as was envisaged in the Amsterdam Treaty, rather than having to obey new rules they had no say in making.
Maybe Mr De Rossa is referring to my calling the Government "irresponsible" for agreeing to permit full and free access to Ireland to all citizens of the successful applicant countries once their accession treaties are ratified, even though the provisions of these treaties say that they will acquire such rights as an entitlement of EU citizenship only after a period of up to seven years. This seven-year period is a quid pro quo for the bar on EU investors being entitled to buy land and other assets in the eastern applicant countries for the same length of time. The Sunday Business Post reported this Government offer a week ago. It was news to me, as I expect it was to most people.
Is it not irresponsible of the Government to extend the most basic rights of Irish citizenship - the right to residence, to work and to health and social welfare maintenance - to a possible 75 million East Europeans from January 2004, the likely date of their EU accession, without informing the Dáil or discussion with the public?
It is one thing for our new EU fellow citizens in East European countries being entitled under EU law to live and work throughout the 15 member-states, including Ireland, after seven years. That is welcome and should be welcomed. It is quite a different thing to say they can all come to Ireland, the only English-speaking country to make such an offer - an offer, moreover, that was quite unqualified - from day one.
If large numbers take advantage of this offer, as is probable, what will be the effect on Irish workers' wages? As a trade unionist and socialist, this must concern Mr De Rossa. Does IBEC's enthusiasm for the Treaty of Nice and a speedy large enlargement of the EU derive from its knowledge that from January 2004 Irish employers will be able to draw on a huge pool of East European workers, who are working today at real wages that are typically one-third of ours and mostly living in countries with heavy unemployment?
Is the Government seeking to prevent foreign-owned companies in Ireland from moving to the cheap labour countries of Eastern Europe in an enlarged EU by saying that they are free to bring East European workers here immediately instead, without any need for work permits or any reference to the state of the Irish labour market?
Is Finance Minister McCreevy making contingency plans to meet the increased demand for housing, health and social welfare that will surely arise once word gets around Eastern Europe that anyone, family members as well as workers, can come to Ireland from day one of their EU accession, even though they have no legal right to move freely throughout the EU for up to seven years? Do Fine Gael and Labour stand over this Government offer? When John Bruton and I discussed it on Drogheda Community Radio last Friday, Mr Bruton implied that he did not.
Is it not legitimate to ask such questions, arising from the Sunday Business Post report? Or have our canons of political correctness becomes so rigid and irrational that one must be called a xenophobe or racist for asking them? - Yours, etc.,
ANTHONY COUGHLAN, Secretary, National Platform, Crawford Avenue, Dublin 9.