Madam, - Eoin Ó Broin (September 13th) is, of course, entitled to argue that social democracy has run its course. What is certain is that the economic policies advocated by Sinn Féin - and its allies in the European Parliament - reached their sell-by date in 1989/1990 as the Berlin Wall was dragged down. The incoherent attempts of Gerry Adams to present an updated version in the recent election debates remain a potent memory.
Mr Ó Broin sets out the main lines of the Sinn Féin approach to the forthcoming referendum on the EU Reform Treaty. They are remarkably familiar, having been advanced in every treaty debate between 1972 and 2002. Sinn Féin's fundamental nationalist approach to the European Union and its evolution have not changed. Today its policy stance is hard to differentiate from that of the British Tories.
Sinn Féin, we are told, wants an EU that "combats poverty, inequality and social injustice. . ." Having been directly involved in Frank Cluskey's initiatives to put those issues on the European agenda and in the establishment of the Combat Poverty Agency, I can easily sympathise with such an aspiration. But if we are to debate EU matters seriously a neat one-liner is not enough. The facts must be faced.
The key policy components of any strategy to combat poverty - economic policy, taxation, social security, housing, health, education - are in the main the prerogative of EU member-states and not of the Union itself. For the EU to have the competence to go beyond co-ordination and setting general frameworks, as within the Lisbon Strategy, would require a transfer of powers - and of sovereignty - to the EU institutions. Experience suggests that this would be resisted at every step by Mr Ó Broin and his comrades.
Such consideration of the facts of EU competences and policies - and of what the Reform Treaty actually contains and means - is critical to any meaningful debate in the coming months. Assertions and selective quotations on all aspects of the Treaty must, and will, be confronted with the facts. What is at stake is the future balanced development of the Union within which this country has achieved so much. - Yours, etc,
TONY BROWN,
Bettyglen,
Raheny,
Dublin 5.