THE LABOUR Party has called on the Government parties to show more leadership in the campaign for a Yes vote to the Lisbon Treaty.
Labour’s European affairs spokesman Joe Costello said yesterday that Fianna Fáil and the Green Party seemed more intent on pussyfooting around than engaging in an honest campaign.
“The Green Party leadership is overly anxious to prevent an internal party decision on the draft Nama proposals until after the Lisbon referendum on the October 2nd, while the Taoiseach appears unsure as to whether to publish the Commission on Taxation’s report before the Lisbon referendum,” said Mr Costello.
He added that only a short while ago the Government was reluctant to publish the Nama legislation at all before the referendum.
“This coalition Government has become indecisive and panicky. The two components in it are watching their backs, watching each other and watching each other’s backbenchers. It is not a pretty political sight.
“The Lisbon referendum was lost last year because of the lack of Government leadership: the Greens failed to get a mandate to campaign and Fianna Fáil just failed to campaign. On this occasion the Greens have a mandate and Fianna Fáil cannot afford a second failure. So why don’t they just get on with it?” Mr Costello said that for those parties, like his own, who believed that the Lisbon Treaty was about enhanced democratisation, increased accountability and the effective functioning of the enlarged European Union, it did not matter when Nama or the report of the Commission on Taxation came along.
Meanwhile, groups for and against the treaty stepped up their campaigns. Chair of the People’s Movement, former MEP Patricia McKenna, attacked the Referendum Commission and claimed its explanatory booklet was misleading and selective. “While the guide, which has been distributed at taxpayers’ expense to every house in the State, does not openly advocate a Yes vote, it has nevertheless been cleverly designed to do exactly that,” she said.
Ms McKenna said the document appeared to fly in the face of the principles established by the Supreme Court that taxpayers’ money should not be used to influence the outcome of a referendum.
Pro-Lisbon group Ireland’s Future insisted that the treaty was about reforming the EU to make it more democratic and efficient and warned against misinformation. The director of the group, Mary Frances McKenna, said there were several popular misconceptions: that the treaty would turn the EU into a super state; that it would make the EU less democratic; that it was a threat to Irish neutrality; that it posed a threat to workers’ rights and that it would threatened Christian values.
Ms McKenna said there was no substance to such claims.
