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YD Date: 17.12.2010 Youth Defence has described the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in the ABC case as "intrusive, unwelcome and an attempt to violate Ireland's pro-life laws". Spokeswoman Rebecca Roughneen also added that the court's ruling was "not surprising" given that the court had shown in previous rulings that it supported abortion and the Council of Europe, who governed the court, had also attempted to coerce Ireland into legalising abortion. 
Ms Roughneen said that the ECHR had failed to recognise that no "right" to legal abortion existed in Ireland and that the court had confused legitimate medical treatment with abortion. "The court ruled that an 'existing Constitutional right to an abortion' had not been implemented to date in Ireland. But that's absolutely incorrect, since no such Constitutional right exists." said Ms Roughneen. "Furthermore, it's absolutely untrue to claim that pregnant women with cancer can't be treated in Ireland - what the court refused to recognise was that medical treatment for cancer which causes unintentional harm to the unborn baby is not an abortion, and this treatment is therefore fully accessible to all Irish women." "This ruling should be dismissed out of hand by the government, since it is an unwarranted attempt to coerce the Irish people and overturn our ban on abortion," said Ms Roughneen. "In fact, far from violating human rights, Ireland's pro-life ethos upholds and respects the human rights of both mother and child." Niamh Uí Bhriain of the Life Institute said that despite claims to the contrary, this ruling by the European Court of Human Rights was not really binding in a practicable sense. "The ruling is not enforceable; the court cannot force Ireland to change her laws or demand penalties from Ireland if we refuse," she pointed out. Ms Uí Bhriain also said that while the ECHR does have legal standing, it had now completely demolished its own moral authority by denying human rights to unborn children. "This is a high-handed, coercive judgment," she said. "It's agenda-driven, illogical and refuses to recognise either the medical facts, or the sovereign right of the Irish people to decide on important moral issues." "In Ireland, under our Constitution, the people are sovereign: they will make the final decision in regard to abortion. That's a right the Irish people feel very strongly about - and that's why our politicians haven't moved to legalise abortion here - because there would be uproar," she added. Youth Defence also said that the case had been a propaganda exercise by the Irish Family Planning Association, who had falsely tried to claim that genuine medical treatments, such as those that treat an ectopic pregnancy or cancer, should be classified as abortion. They pointed out that the UN says that Ireland, where abortion is banned, is the safest place in the world for a woman to have a baby. "The Irish people have shown in three separate referenda that they don't want abortion legalised here. It's very significant that abortion campaigners wanted to use a foreign court to impose abortion on the Irish people. They're desperate to bypass the democratic right of the people to choose. This is one country which has not fallen to the abortion industry, and we're working to keep it that way," said Rebecca Roughneen. She said that the ruling was "utterly unnacceptable and wrong-headed". She said that any attempt by the government to enact the ECHR ruling would meet with determined and successful resistance. "The right to life has always been upheld by the people, not by governments or quangos," she said. "As long as we can keep informing and educating the Irish people, we'll succeed in preventing abortion from being legalised in Ireland."
Other news reports on the ABC Case
More Information The facts are very clearly laid out on the YD website: http://www.youthdefence.ie/campaigns/set-the-record-straight/ - and are summarised here below. 1. If a woman is pregnant with cancer she will be given every option for treatment that is offered to a non-pregnant woman, even if that treatment results in the unintentional death of her baby. Similarly if an ectopic pregnancy occurs or a women develops toxemia she will also be given all treatment necessary to save her life even if that results in the unintentional death of her baby. The crucial difference between this and abortion is that there is no intention to kill the baby.
2. Intention is crucially important - it protects the baby, the mother and the doctor.
3. The Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have confirmed before an Oireachtas Committee that they do not consider, and have never considered, these medical treatments as abortion. That's why they are free to carry them out in Ireland where abortion is banned. And Ireland, according to the UN, is the safest place in the world for a mother to have a baby. The ECHR has no business interfering in Irish pro-life laws and they have no right to try to scare Irish women into believing that they would ever need an abortion to save their life.
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Cóir Date: 08.12.2010 As Irish taxpayers endure the toughest budget in living memory, Cóir has said that EU and IMF takeover has meant that families and vulnerable citizens have become the immediate targets of cuts and taxes scheduled for 2011.
Maria Mhic Meanmain of Cóir said that cuts to child benefit and moves to push mothers into the workforce were disproportionately affecting families who were already paying through the nose for providing a full-time parent to their children. She added that the Budget was penalising larger families in particular - for example by slashing €10 and €20 per month from the first and second child in a family in receipt of child benefit but taking €20 from the third or subsequent child. "At a time when we need to build families for growth the government is making it very hard for people to have children," said the Cóir spokeswoman. "And we're promised a whole range of carbon taxes and water charges - which again hit larger families the hardest."
"Previously the Irish government, at the behest of the EU, introduced tax individualisation which forces families with a full-time mother (or father) to pay up to a whopping €7000 in additional taxes. Families with a single income also face a higher threshold when claiming medical benefits. Now - and again at the behest of the EU and the IMF - things are being made even harder for traditional families," said Ms Mhic Meanmain.
The EU/IMF plan specified that new tax measures would hit married one-income families hardest, going so far as to ensure that the additional tax paid by such families in the Budget would be even greater than the additional tax paid by a single person.
The government were happy to do as they were told. Budget 2011 cuts the take-home pay of a married one-income family on €50,000 by €1,071 while a single person on the same wage sees take home pay reduced by €885 - a difference of almost €200 in favour of the single taxpayer.
Ms Mhic Meanmain said that the changes was not only unfair and punitive to families, they was clearly unconstitutional since the Irish Constitution gave special recognition to the work done by the mother at home and ordered the state to endeavour to ensure that mothers would not be forced out to work.
"Clearly, the EU and the IMF couldn't care less for the Irish Constitution or for what the Irish people might actually want," she said. "And since our government handed over our Constitution in the Lisbon Treaty, they're not in a position to object."
Ajal Chopra, the man leading the IMF team in Ireland, has recommended that the Irish government give women with small children a five per cent tax credit to encourage them back into the workforce - a measure Ms Mhic Meanmain described as both discriminatory and pointless, since the rate of unemployment in Ireland had doubled in just 24 months.
Professor Ray Kinsella, an expert in banking and financial services at the University College Dublin Graduate School said that the Budget would "vandalise the economy" and that to rebuild the economy "families - who provide the future - needed to be supported". Cóir said that in order to get the country back on track, the government should default on the debt and tell the EU/IMF team to go home. "This dent - up to €100 billion - is not a debt incurred by the Irish people. It's the cost of bailing out the greedy reckless French and German banks who lent billions to the greedy, reckless Irish banks. We should default and start to build our economy again - and tell the EU and IMF to lay off our families," said Ms Mhic Meanmain.
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Cóir Date: 06.12.2010 Cóir has said that tomorrow's Budget will be the "cruellest in living memory" and that it "will batter families in order to rescue the EU banks and prevent the crash of the euro". Leaks ahead of tomorrow's budget have indicated that families will be amongst the hardest hit by the Budget, with child benefit slashed, college fees re-introduced and taxes increased across the board. It will also bring cuts to social welfare benefits, pushing people already below the breadline into abject poverty.
"This Budget is savage. The Irish people are being battered by the severe measures being forced on us by the EU and the IMF. We should insist that the government defaults on the debt, sends the EU and the IMF packing, and then focus on what Ireland needs, rather than what our EU master are insisting we must bear," said Richard Greene of Cóir. "The current situation - where the people are being forced to take on unsustainable levels of debt to shore up the EU banks and the euro - amounts to treason."
"We've seen our sovereignty handed over lock, stock and barrel, by Fianna Fáil in the past month," he continued. "But all of the main political parties support the EU's actions and say they would also see this generation and the next shoulder massive debt rather than stand up to the EU. It's time the people rose up and took back their country."
Mr Greene said that Ireland's ability to deal with the recession was paralysed by the EU's demands that we take on the bank's bad debts and by our membership of the Eurozone. "Two years ago we were told that but for the EU we would be in the same sorry situation as Iceland," said the Cóir spokesman. "But Iceland is recovering while we're sinking into an abyss, and, according to leading economists like Paul Krugman, Iceland's recover is partly due to their ability to devalue their currency, an option denied to Ireland."
He added that, in the past months, the EU had shown beyond all possible doubt that the best outcome for Ireland and her people were not a serious concern of EU elites.
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Cóir Date: 19.11.2010 The EU's Galileo Project is expected to take longer to build and cost much more than originally expected. Many newspapers across Europe including Ireland’s News of the World has covered stories on this revelation.
It is claimed Brussels expects the project to make losses in the long term. The EU had proud intentions of building its own alternative to the GPS navigation system that America boasts but could carry with it heavy financial constraints to the European taxpayer in a time when they are already feeling the pinch in their pockets.
This projects warrants to use of around thirty satellites and is set to have its first satellites in position next year and have the job completed in 2018 which is 10 year behind schedule.
The eventual costs are estimated at around €2 billion. According to the German Financial Times, "All in all, it is assumed, based on the currently available estimates, that the operating costs will exceed direct revenues, even in the long term." They also anticipate that the EU would have to spend a further three quarters of a billion euro per year to finance it.
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Cóir Date: 19.11.2010 The euro first found its way into our wallets in Ireland in 2002. But its conception in the brain of the EU lies much further back in history. In May 1970, the Werner Report, which had been ordered by the European Commission to assess the possibility of a single currency for what was then the EEC, stated that “considerations of a psychological and political nature militate in favour of the adoption of a sole currency which would confirm the irreversibility of the venture [i.e. European integration].”
Two years later, the French President Georges Pompidou declared that the member states should “move irrevocably to economic and monetary union by 1980.” When Pompidou’s words reached London, the Foreign Secretary Douglas Home remarked to the fanatically europhile Prime Minister, Edward Heath, “The House isn’t going to like this.” “But that” replied Heath, “is what it’s all about.” And that is what it is all about.
From its earliest days, the EU has been interested gaining more power over its member states. Every Treaty, every decision of the European Court of Justice, every Regulation, every Directive has served to further that end. And the EU is not just interested in having power over issues like trade and tariffs between the states. Increasingly, it desires to have power over those states’ internal affairs too – including their fiscal and economic policies.
When we fought the Lisbon Treaty last year, one of the most fiercely contested issues was that of tax. Could the EU force us to increase our competitive corporation tax rate, thus driving away foreign investment in Ireland? “Nonsense,” said the politicians. “Our European partners aren’t interested in that, and besides we’ve got our guarantees ...” Well, last week we were faced with the spectacle of a European Commissioner marching into Dublin to tell our Finance Minster what cuts he should make in the forthcoming budget. And this week we see the Finance Ministers of France, Italy and Austria saying that Ireland’s tax rate is something that might have to be sacrificed in exchange for a bailout by the ECB. And none other than arch-europhile Stephen Collins, writing in the Irish Times on 18 November, says that “the real danger is that other EU states will try to tamper with major national policy issues like the 12.5% corporate tax rate.” So much for those wonderful guarantees.
The government would do well to heed the words of a truly patriotic politician, former French Prime Minister Mèndes-France. When the Treaty of Rome, the cornerstone of the modern European Union, was signed in 1957, he remarked: “France must not become a victim of the Treaty. A democrat may abdicate by giving in to an internal dictatorship, but also by delegating his powers to an external authority.”
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