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Dr. Seán O'Domhnaill Date: 26 August 2009 Professor Laffan’s opening line in this week’s Irish Medical News (24/8/09) is entirely correct. Allow me to quote: “It is very easy to demonise the EU”. Rather than moving on to argue against her initial statement, she should probably ask herself exactly why this is the case. Is it the fact that the Irish people live in a sovereign democratic constitutional Republic and that our democratic decision to reject the further political and military integration of Europe through the Lisbon and Nice treaties is ignored by our European neighbours in addition to our political gravy-train elite and their cheer-leaders in the personage of people like Professor Laffan. 
We joined and economic community. We have contributed nearly ten times what we have received from Europe in structural funds in the form of fishing rights that has led to the annihilation of our island fishing industry. We have turned one of the most arable lands in Europe into a city-centred economy utterly dependent on a combination of farm subsidies and enormous international investment. Contrary to Prof. Laffan’s assertion that rejection of the Lisbon Treaty has led to our removal from the core of Europe, it has led to our expression of the will of not just the Irish people but also according to the unelected European elite to the it was also an expression of the will of 95% of the European people, deliberately denied their democratic right to self-expression for fear that they would return the wrong answer to the question of whether or not Europeans want further integration.
Democracy is rule of the people, by the people and for the people. It respects democratic referenda, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. Apologies by our political leadership for our failure to ratify a Treaty that we did not want were tantamount to treason. It certainly smelt more of politburo decision-making when our democratically-elected political representatives almost unanimously support a Treaty referendum re-run rather than standing by the decision of the people, by the people and for the people. We are an educated electorate. We knew what way we wanted to vote, and it wasn’t a trial run.
Professor Laffan is a professor of European politics, an expert on European politics. The fact that she is so willing to comply with the diktats of the unelected Commission rather than support due democratic process shows how far Europe has gone in the erosion of basic democratic principles. Prof. Lafffan tells us that every time Ireland voted ‘Yes’ to a European treaty, it was good for Ireland. That is fascinating given the fact that we endured a twenty year period of poverty after joining the EEC, before we voted in a European Treaty that coincided with economic boom. Given that the EU has failed to sign off on its own accounts for the past fifteen years, resulting this year in the forced resignation of its Chief Auditor, Marta Andreasen, who tells us that the EU can only account for ten per cent of its 1,000 Billion Euro annual budget (Read her book published last May), provided by the Irish and other European tax-payers, there is a very simple reason for voting for further financial integration, unadulterated financial waste! Since last we voted “No” to Lisbon, the level of inward investment into Ireland has increased by more than 30% according to the Central statistics Office.
Lisbon is no longer about integrating the other EU treaties, it is about a basic fact of European democracy; the EU does not respect our democracy (as indicated by the European parliament’s vote against respecting Ireland’s last referendum) and our political masters’ willingness to toady to an unelected elite whose names most people don’t even know. There is no legal assurance provided that has legal standing before the European Courts.
If there is any doubt in your mind about this fact, read the second part of the ballot paper: “No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State which are necessitated by the obligations of membership of the European Union or of the Communities, or prevents laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the European Union or by the Communities or by institutions thereof, or by bodies competent under the Treaties establishing the Communities, from having the force of law in the State.” If you don’t remember this it shows how efficiently the campaign for Lisbon is at blinding you to what they are really at, selling our sovereignty to the countries who love us and our fishing rights that they want this paltry nation “at the core of Europe”.
Dr. Seán Ó Domhnaill is a committed anti-imperialist, and a democrat.
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Acne doesn't come on a boy's face until he's 14.