First a thank you to Pat Cox and Micheál Martin: their rage and anger at Cóir’s posters has brought enormous attention to an issue we felt compelled to explain to the electorate; that the Lisbon Treaty will assist the EU in exerting downward pressure on wages – not just for those on minimum wages but for everyone.
 
What Cóir is saying is that the EU Courts are facilitating – even driving - a race to the bottom in terms of wages. The EU Court has found in the Ruffert, Laval and Viking judgments that the right to earn a living wage is less important than the right of big business to make a profit – even when that means exploiting workers.

27 August 2009

So now we have Michael O’Leary announcing that he will splash out €500,000 of Ryanair’s cash on a Yes campaign. He’ll be joining Intel then, in spending corporate funds in an attempt to overturn the sovereign wishes of the Irish people.

It suits large corporations just fine to blather on about being at the heart of Europe when what they are really looking for is the creation of an EU super-state where profit is king and people are treated like medieval serfs. That’s not to say that it isn’t entirely sensible that companies, large or small, would want to be profitable, just that the self-serving, greedy attitude of large corporations, banks and politicians is what has caused the economic recession now hurting ordinary families.


O’Leary’s comments at his launch yesterday were a rehash of the scaremongering used by Fianna Fáil, the Opposition, Ireland for Europe and every other Yes campaigner to date. O’Leary is not stupid, so it’s unlikely that he is actually confusing the Lisbon Treaty with the creation of the eurozone.

As Brian Hickey pointed out yesterday, the facts are that, without Lisbon, we can still borrow from the European Central Bank, and we will be a full member of the European Union. 
Saying No to Lisbon cannot and will not change that. It will, however, bring further problems for the Irish economy as we will face an attack on our low corporate tax rates, and lose control of immigration.


06 August 2009

Ever since the decisive No vote last year, Yes campaigners have been desperately trying to create more favourable conditions for pushing through the Lisbon Treaty. One particular bug bear for outraged politicos was the equal airtime provision necessitated by the 1998 Coughlan judgment. This was outrageous, went the petulant argument of the Yessers, actually allowing opposing sides in a referendum equal time to put forward their views meant the elites might not have it all their own way.

05 August 2009