A treaty of vital importance?

COMMENT

EAMON Gilmore told us at the weekend that “the people of Ireland have spoken” when endorsing the European Fiscal Treaty. Well, I have news for the leader of the Labour Party: the people of Ireland have not spoken. Some of the people of Ireland have spoken. Nobody asked the people of Derry, Antrim, Down, Armagh, Fermanagh or Tyrone for their opinion.

Are these counties not part of Ireland too? Is our former President Mary McAleese not Irish because she is a native of Belfast? And what about the Tyrone football team, which won the All-Ireland a few years ago? Should Tyrone and the other counties across the border be disqualified from competing in the championship?
One doesn’t have to be a member of Sinn Féin to complain about describing this State as “Ireland”. I remember the former Fine Gael TD Austin Currie, himself a native of Tyrone, always complaining about the partitionist attitude that has developed here over the years.
The people of the Republic of Ireland have spoken. The people of this State have spoken. So please stop talking about “the people of Ireland” when you really mean the people of the 26 counties.
Anyway, only about half of the people of the State who were entitled to vote actually came out and voted. Of those, some 40% voted against the treaty. So you couldn’t call it a ringing endorsement.
As I explained last week, I did not vote myself because I was unable to make up my mind which way to vote. We were told that the treaty was of vital importance to our future. One side said it was vitally important to vote yes and the other side said it was vitally important to vote no. Both sides told a lot of lies and left me more confused at the end of the campaign than I was at the beginning.
I had a second reason for not voting. I was in Spain. Now, if I was really convinced by one side or the other that voting a particular way was of “vital importance”, I would have made sure to come home and register my vote. However, neither side convinced me.
I was leaning towards the yes side but my partner, who would insist on travelling with me, was leaning towards the no side. So if we did vote, we would have cancelled each other out.
Anyway, I feel the fiscal treaty may not make a blind bit of difference one way or the other. Powerful countries like Germany will still be in control. They might pretend that we have an equal voice in Europe but if it suits Germany and, to a lesser extent, France, to bend or break the rules, they will bend or break them.
If Germany says we will not get a new deal on our crippling bank debt, then we will not get a new deal, irrespective of which way we voted. Germany will always act in Germany’s interests and who can blame them for that? I presume the Irish Government will always act in Ireland’s interests but I could be wrong there.
I have no doubt that many of the people who voted for the treaty last Thursday did so reluctantly. They felt it was better to be on the safe side and the safe side seemed to be the yes side. Unlike other treaties, this one was about financial matters. A lot of people felt their pensions or their State salaries might be at risk if we voted no.
Then there was the element of blackmail. We had Finance Minister Michael Noonan threatening us that a no vote would result in a very tough budget at the end of the year. There I was thinking we were in for very tough budgets over the next three or four years. I understood there were still to be severe cut-backs in State spending and further increases in taxation before we are out of the woods, no matter what way we voted. Are we now going to get an easy budget next December? You know the answer to that one as well as I do.
Then we had the spectacle of Mr Gilmore accusing Sinn Féin of telling lies. If there was ever a case of pot calling the kettle black, this was it surely. What about all the lies the Labour Party told us before the election? Sinn Féin are only playing the same game in Opposition that the Labour Party played so well over the years. If Sinn Féin are telling us lies and if the party ever gets into government on the back of those lies, then Sinn Féin too will get their comeuppance some fine day.
If the Labour Party is in trouble now, it has only itself to blame. Labour promised us that things would be so different and so much better if they got into power. However, what we have is Fianna Fáil under a different name. Instead of things being better under Labour, they are actually worse. I bet you have less disposable income in your pocket today under Fine Gael and Labour than you had two, three or four years ago under Fianna Fáil.
The issues that turned the people against Fianna Fáil, such as cut-backs in health and education, property taxes, household charges, septic tank fees and bank debts are still there. They are still going to be there when people vote in the local and European elections in two years’ time.