Madam, – As if Cóir’s totally untrue claims on a minimum wage are not enough, we now have bogus claims on what terrible things Lisbon will do to our public service. And worse we have these claims from 136 local councillors (Home News, September 9th).
I have worked with local and central authorities from over 20 of the current member states for nearly 20 years. Let me make a few points.
1. No country in Europe except possibly Bulgaria has a shambles of local government as has developed in the Republic of Ireland. To imply that the big bad EU and its Lisbon Treaty somehow wants to deprive us of the superior public services we enjoy is breath-taking in its arrogant self-delusion.
As people see when they go abroad, other EU states who have ratified the Lisbon Treaty – France, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Germany to name but a few – enjoy infinitely better public service and local government than we do. Does anyone believe that politicians of these countries, rooted in many cases in municipal government themselves, would have agreed to a treaty that threatens the public services they cherish so much?
2. What is true of local government is even truer of much central government – notably in health and education. No university fees in a host of EU member states (I know; I have studied in several of them), and in almost all an infinitely more equitable, efficient and cost-effective health system than in Ireland (I know, since I have got sick in several of them, and my kids have been born abroad).
Do we seriously think Belgian and French political representatives who, like their citizens, pay €25 and €22 respectively to see a GP (perhaps a bit more on week-ends), would support Lisbon in the knowledge it would threaten their public services?
Would the EU’s two big political formations – Social and Christian Democrat, each with a large trade union base and both much more committed to citizen-focused public services than many parties in our own country – back a treaty that threatens public services? Or does the No campaign claim to be more prescient than the rest of Europe?
The argument about Lisbon and public services is a figment of an over-active and ill-informed imagination. Lisbon does not threaten our public services.
Indeed much European legislation (especially environmental, consumer) has helped remind our local and occasionally central authorities of their public responsibilities to citizens.
COLM McCLEMENTS
Riverview,
Virginia,
Co Cavan.
Madam, – Dr Laurent Pech tries to muddy the waters in relation to the holding of referenda by bringing up the situation in California, which has had referenda on many and varied issues. The Lisbon Treaty will hand over more sovereignty to the European Union – on that everyone can agree.
The people are sovereign in most EU member states, so the governments who passed the Lisbon Treaty via their parliaments handed over what belongs to the people without asking the people.
I have not heard anyone suggest we should hold a referendum on every single matter but there are some matters of such import that the people should be asked. Handing over more power to an organisation, which is dominated by nations who have a history of contemptuously dismissing their own citizens’ views on the EU, is definitely one of them. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – In these times of recession I suggest we revert to the “barter system” used by our ancestors.
We students will vote Yes to Lisbon in exchange for no college fees. – Yours, etc,