Sir, – News that David Cameron has pledged to hold a referendum on continued British membership of the EU is welcome indeed (Breaking News, January 23rd). One can only hope that other member states will follow suit, particularly our own.
Continued EU membership is doubtless going to entail further transfer of sovereignty and decision making powers from directly elected national parliaments over to EU institutions. While I’m sure there are those that would welcome such developments – particularly among some of our ideologically-driven Government TDs – it must be left up to the citizens to decide if this is the direction the country should take.
In recent years this country has seen several referendums on European issues, with each one surreptitiously bringing us closer to a single European state, with our country effectively being run from Brussels. Yet on each occasion, the diminution of sovereignty that accompanied the referendum was buried deep in the detail of the text.
Even when such referendums were democratically rejected, the results were dismissed as the result of fear or lack of understanding of the issues, and a re-run of each referendum was held, in order that we remain on an apparently pre-ordained path towards European unity.
What is now required here is a referendum similar to the one Mr Cameron has pledged, in which the full implications are clear and simple – EU membership, yes or no? Democracy should not be side-stepped just because the politicians we elected on the back of promises of burden-sharing and economic recovery also happen to harbour ambitions of a united Europe. They have no mandate to oversee the demise of a sovereign Irish State. That decision rests solely – and directly – with the Irish people. – Yours, etc,