IRELAND’S EU commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn urged people to back the fiscal treaty, saying the looming referendum was probably the most important Irish vote on any European treaty.
Saying there was no Plan B in the event of a No vote, Ms Geoghegan-Quinn said international business leaders had emphasised to her the need for stability and certainty in Ireland and in Europe.
“They want to be able to make decisions that are far-reaching into the future, so all eyes – it seems to me from the talks I had with them – are on Ireland,” the commissioner told reporters.
“I’m very concerned that in the middle of all the debate that people are losing sight of what the main issue is and I feel really importantly that if Irish people want to do one thing themselves about the crisis that they need to get out and to vote Yes.”
The treaty toughens Europe’s rules of economic governance and any country which does not ratify by March next year will not have the right to emergency aid from the European Stability Mechanism permanent rescue fund. Ms Geoghegan-Quinn said a Yes vote was the only sure way to secure funding for the State for public services and would send a message to markets and investors that Ireland meant business and was a central player in the euro zone.
“We need to keep our focus on this, that it’s about jobs and it’s about money and it’s also about certainty and clarity and uncertainty comes with a price.”
Ms Geoghegan-Quinn – who commands the EU’s science, research and innovation brief – said she was intervening in the debate “because I’m Irish and I think it’s fundamentally important to the future of my country”. She said at one point that the referendum was “simply and solely” about giving Ireland access to a funding mechanism if any government ever needed one. Asked if that meant the body of the treaty proper was irrelevant, she said that was not so.
“I’m saying that the treaty puts in place the kind of policies that we need in Europe to prevent what happened in Ireland and in other member states from ever happening again.” On the situation in Greece, she said the EU authorities were obliged to await the outcome of talks to form a government. Visiting Greece last week, she said she formed the impression that the decision voters would make “was not so much against Europe as to punish those that had brought Greece to the situation it was in” .
While saying the commission has been prioritising economic growth since the very first meeting of the present college in March 2010, she said she found it extraordinary that some people believed the victory speech of incoming French president François Hollande was the first time anyone talked about growth.
