Madam, - Opponents of Ireland's ratification of the EU Reform Treaty claim that the whole process across the EU is anti-democratic, and that, bar the 1 per cent in Ireland, the other 99 per cent of nearly 500 million people are disenfranchised (Brian Martin, January 11th). Therefore, it is suggested, we should register a No on both their and our behalf. The argument does not stand up to close scrutiny.
First of all, as the former president of Latvia, Dr Vïke-Freiberga, told the Forum on Europe on December 13th, "the Constitutional Treaty, its contents and the main thesis of it were being debated in Latvia at the same time as we were debating our adhesion and its pluses and minuses, the advantages and disadvantages of being in the European Union. We debated it all together."
Nine of the 12 accession countries which joined in 2004 and since held referendums on entry; so, if we add in Ireland, the people of 10 out of the 27 member-states will have been directly consulted. The views of another two, France and the Netherlands, who rejected the Constitutional Treaty, have also been taken into account with the modifications that have been made.
Secondly, there is the breathtaking presumption that representative democracy through parliamentary ratification has no validity compared with direct democracy by referendum. It is far from clear that a complex treaty which makes important but limited changes to the way the EU operates, and which has none of the apocalyptic significance attributed to it by Eurosceptics, has to be decided by way of referendum rather than by the people's elected representatives in parliament.
Constitutionally, we may have no choice in the matter. Every other country does. I read of no great agitation in either France or the Netherlands for ratification of the Reform Treaty by referendum, despite their popular rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in 2005.
We have absolutely no right to repudiate the way this decision is being made democratically in every other EU country, still less to condescending and quixotic notions that the Irish people somehow have to provide a voice for all the other peoples that their governments are allegedly denying them.
If we want to consider their interests, we should join in endorsing a treaty, likely to be ratified by every parliament of the other 26 member-states, and not attempt to obstruct the progress of our shared European Union, when we do not have a compelling national reason for doing so, and every interest in not doing so. - Yours, etc,
Dr MARTIN MANSERGH TD, Dáil Éireann, Dublin 2.