SF PRESS CONFERENCE:SINN FÉIN insisted yesterday that Ireland will lose its veto in the current round of World Trade Organisation negotiations if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified.
At a press conference in Dublin, the party’s Dáil leader, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, argued that the treaty represented a bad deal for rural Ireland.
Mr Ó Caoláin, flanked by the party’s sole Senator, Pearse Doherty and Northern Ireland MEP Bairbre de Brún, said that Article 2 (b) of the treaty would hand over exclusive competence over international trade agreements – like the WTO talks – to the European Commission.
Mr Doherty added that Article 188 of the treaty changed the current rules of negotiations for international agreements.
“Ireland’s remaining vetoes in areas such as trade in services and intellectual property are either removed or made so conditional that they are rendered useless,” he said.
The Donegal-based Senator went on to contend that the treaty will remove over 60 vetoes.
When it was put to him that the veto in relation to agriculture has been removed since the Amsterdam Treaty and that it would be “artificial” to use a veto for services or intellectual property to protect Irish farming, he said the agricultural veto may have been lost but the Government was still able to operate a veto when required to the benefit of Irish farming.
The other main thrust of Sinn Féin’s argument yesterday was the treaty’s provisions to reduce the number of commissioners from 27 to 18. Ms de Brún said that having an Irish commissioner had been in the interest of farming communities, both North and South.
When asked for specific instances of this, Ms de Brún said she was reluctant to go into specific details but that “farming interests in the North had been kept alive through the activities of the Irish commissioner and the Irish Government.
“It is seen in relation to measures around what would be available to agriculture in the North as opposed to agriculture in Britain, even during the speculation around the beef ban for example.
In a separate development, Fianna Fáil TD Michael Woods said “damaging comments” by Sinn Féin encouraging people to vote No and send the Government back into negotiation on the treaty “could cost Ireland valuable goodwill built up over 35 years of EU membership”.
Speaking at a local constituency meeting, Dr Woods said: “These recent comments by Sinn Féin are extremely damaging, effectively urging people to vote No so as to delay the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty.
“What they aren’t saying is that our credentials as leading Europeans would be seriously questioned and the goodwill built up over the years would be cast in doubt if we fail to ratify this treaty now.”
He said many of the countries which had joined the EU in 2004 would legitimately ask why a country which had benefited so much from EU membership and which many of them had held up as a model should turn its back on the progress of the union.
