The Lisbon Treaty dilemma

Madam, - It is gratifying that the debate on the Treaty of Lisbon is continuing on your pages as it is the single most important…

Madam, - It is gratifying that the debate on the Treaty of Lisbon is continuing on your pages as it is the single most important issue affecting Ireland's future - and one where we may determine the outcome for ourselves.

Your edition of August 1st reported that Italy had completed its ratification of the Lisbon Treaty with a unanimous final vote in its lower house of Parliament. This echoes many other results across Europe: the vote in the Cortes in Spain, for example, was 306 for, 6 against. To date 24 member-states of the Union have ratified Lisbon, one has rejected the treaty and two results are pending, with the likelihood of a Yes in both. To me, this does not suggest the "European elite" (the preferred pejorative term of the anti-Treaty camps) ramming their project through; rather it indicates that democratically elected parliamentarians across Europe consider the Lisbon Treaty to be in the best interest of their peoples. Indeed, if we had parliamentary ratification in Ireland - rather than the farrago of the recent referendum - the vote in the Dáil would have been similar to that in the Cortes and elsewhere.

Where does all this leave us? It was a mantra of the No campaign that Ireland should return to the negotiating table and secure a "better deal" - though in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of the No campaign, no one had a clue as to what that better deal would amount to. All the more so since much of what they campaigned for had already been secured in the Treaty.

We now need to take seriously into account as a nation a number of factors.

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First, our partners do not wish to renegotiate the Treaty; that is their prerogative and we cannot force them to do so.

Second, it was not understood during the referendum that a No vote would have consequences for Ireland, almost certainly wholly negative. These are already manifesting themselves and will become starker over time as our influence evaporates and we relegate ourselves (or are relegated) to being a semi-detached and irrelevant British Isles rump. Is that where we wish to be as a nation?

I believe that in these circumstances it would be perfectly reasonable for our Government, after its period of reflection and in concert with our partners, to articulate clearly where the No vote has brought us and to afford us the opportunity to vote again. Should we vote No again, so be it; but at least that vote will be founded on the knowledge that we are leaving the path that has served us and Europe so well for so long.

Finally, I would be happy for the European Council, should it see fit, to make declarations on issues that were contentious in (but irrelevant to) the referendum, such as abortion, taxation or neutrality. But to have new protocols inserted into the Treaty on issues already satisfactorily dealt with from our point of view would be to insult the intelligence of our partners. - Yours, etc,

PATRICK DOYLE,

Summerville,

Clontarf Road,

Dublin 3.

Madam, - The tendentious exaggerations of Richard Greene (August 9th) are typical of the disinformation and scaremongering employed by the No campaign before the Lisbon Treaty referendum.

Firstly, it cannot, at this point, be said that the ratification of the Treaty by the Dáil would be unconstitutional. This would be a matter for the High Court to decide. It would appear that successive governments since 1987 may have erred on the side of caution by holding referendums on every European treaty since then, and arguably have read too much into the Crotty decision. This did not rule that a referendum was necessary in every case of ratification of a European treaty.

Secondly, Mr Green's implied comparisons between the EU and the Soviet Union are insulting to democracy and to the 27 member-states of the EU. They would be laughable, were the accusations not so serious, and so wide of the mark.

Mr Greene says the road to the gulags was "paved by once-democratically elected politicians." This implies that the Bolsheviks had some sort of mandate from the Russian people prior to their actions of October 1917. They did not. They were, in fact, a minority within a minority. They came to power through an illegal use of force.

Finally, invoking the memory of Alexander Solzhenitsyn to bolster Mr Greene's arguments is at best misguided, and at worst downright false. Any comparison between the EU and the Soviet system not only demeans our democratic Europe, but also devalues the sufferings of those who actually did perish under a true tyranny. - Yours, etc,

SEAN BELLEW,

Upper Faughart,

Dundalk,

Co Louth.

Madam, - Richard Greene of Cóir shows remarkable arrogance in suggesting that Ireland spoke for the rest of Europe by voting No to the Lisbon Treaty.

He forgets that a large proportion of people voted No because they didn't understand what was in the Treaty, according to various polls, and that a smaller proportion voted No because of the astounding lie that abortion could be introduced against our will.

Abortion cannot be introduced against our will because a protocol to the Maastricht Treaty strictly forbids EU interference on Irish abortion law.

Can we really say that Ireland spoke for the rest of Europe when organisations like Cóir attempted to misinform the electorate? - Yours, etc,

JAMIE DONNELLY,

Butterfield Grove,

Rathfarnham,

Dublin 14.

Madam, - Stephen Collins has suggested that the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty may "doom" us to become "a client state of Britain" (Opinion, August 2nd). We are already part of the culture of Britain, from sports to shopping malls to music, medicine and business. Add the influence of the US, our major manufacturing investor, and this makes us more firmly part of the Anglosphere. We are closer to London than Berlin.

The EU will continue, Lisbon-light or not, as an open, free market with labour mobility, and a now recalcitrant Irish Republic will remain part of it, one way or another. But we will continue to stay nearest in mind and spirit to our cultural families in North America, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

This is, I suggest, a matter of choice and it is far from being a doom-laden scenario. - Yours, etc,

ROBIN BURY,

Killiney,

Co Dublin.

Madam, - We Irish, like most Europeans, gladly pool a lot of national sovereignty but baulk at the idea of a European superstate and it was simply not clear how far along that road this treaty would take us .

The time has now come for EU leaders comprehensively to outline their plans (including different options) for European integration and let all the people of Europe decide by direct vote. - Yours, etc,

DICK KEANE,

Silchester Park,

Glenageary,

Co Dublin.

Madam, - In his excellent column of August 2nd, Stephen Collins proposed passing the Lisbon Treaty through the Dáil and then testing its constitutionality if appealed to the Supreme Court. This is of course what should have happened in the first place according to the normal rules of parliamentary democracy. In fact, variations of this process have been taking place successfully in all the other member-states of the EU.

Like all our fellow members, Ireland is a representative democracy, not a direct democracy, and when we bypassed the Dáil and went straight into a referendum in a state of ignorance as to the treaty's legality or otherwise we in fact undermined our basic democratic principles rather than reinforcing them. - Yours, etc,

JOHN COTTER,

Abbey Drive,

Ferrybank,

Waterford.