National Forum on Europe: The Government will not be pressured by the European Union into selling off public services if the EU Constitution is agreed, the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, said.
"It is absurd to suggest that the EU is, deliberately or unwittingly, set upon the destruction of public social services," she told the National Forum on Europe. The EU, she said, recognised that member-states had their own history and traditions. "Nothing in the Constitution would prevent that," she went on.
However, the majority of the public was now more concerned about the quality of public services, rather than on who owned them.
"Many people would say it matters little whether these services are purchased by the State for public use rather than provided and organised by the State," she told the audience.
EU member-states should have to unanimously agree to international treaties covering trade in social services, health and education.
However, faced with demands for majority voting on such matters from the Convention on the Future of Europe and the Commission, she offered hints of possible compromise.
"From a national position, we will take a view on the overall balance of inter-governmental final texts in the light of the issues and preferences we have raised," she said.
Over the years Irish governments had acted in the belief that the national interest was achieved by approaching all issues on a balance-of-interest basis, she told the Forum.
However, Mr David Begg, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, said Ireland's experience with liberalisation to date had not been good.
Postal deregulation had been "quite damaging" to An Post, because it was four times more dependent on international mail than continental counterparts. Electricity liberalisation had led to the establishment of "a huge regulatory apparatus", even though the State was too small a market for this to be done efficiently.
The EU did not requires states to privatise public services, he acknowledged, but "its liberal agenda has created the conditions in which this has become inevitable".
Meanwhile, Dr Franz-Joseph Stummann of the Strasbourg-based Assembly of the European Regions said talks on the EU Constitution were being rushed. The Convention on the Future of Europe had been supposed to clearly identify the roles to be played by the EU itself, and by the member-states.
The promise had not been fulfilled. "Instead, we have witnessed the transfer of more competences to the EU with a general drift towards majority voting," he complained.
In his contribution, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr Dick Roche, said there was an urgency to complete the inter-governmental negotiations before June.
The make-up of the European Parliament and a number of governments in EU member-states would change during the course of the year, he warned.