Sir, - Both your Editorial of January 31st and Geraldine Kennedy's article of January 23rd concerning the Eighteenth Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1998, were seriously misleading.
Your editorial described the scope of the proposed amendment to the Constitution as "a very broad sweep indeed".
Geraldine Kennedy wrote of the amendment that: "Technically, this would pave the legal way for the Government to make further security and defence commitments within the EU, even though successive governments have promised to hold a referendum if there is a proposal to change the Republic's policy of military neutrality."
Each of these assertions is wrong. None of the "options or discretions" in question can go beyond what is provided for in the Amsterdam Treaty. Since the treaty does not provide for any security or defence commitments which would require this country to change its neutral status, the exercise of any of its "options or discretions" equally could not entail such a requirement.
Moreover, the "flexibility" provisions in the Amsterdam Treaty do not apply to the provisions on a Common Foreign and Security Policy. Thus, the "legal certainty that they would not include future integration into defence arrangements which would end Ireland's military neutrality", which your editorial claims is absent, in fact already exists in the text of the treaty itself.
This point was actually made in the later part of your January 31st Editorial, but summarily dismissed as one of the allegedly "arcane but significant points, which might still be open to legal challenge."
The text of the treaty clearly delimits the scope of the application of the flexibility provisions. To pretend otherwise is simply wrong.
Your Editorial suggests that the assertion that the flexibility clauses do not apply in the field of foreign policy and defence "would be reinforced by a simple addition to the proposed wording to say the options and discretions do not apply to defence commitments." In the light of the foregoing, and of the treaty provisions themselves, such an addition would be, quite simply, redundant.
The requirements of informed and constructive debate on the important issues raised in the Amsterdam Treaty are not well served by commentaries that ignore the details of the Treaty's actual provisions. - Yours, etc.,
Alan M. Dukes TD,
Chairman, European Movement, Nassau Street, Dublin 2.