Positive response to Sinn Féin’s referendum message

Sinn Féin has said they are pleased with the reaction they are getting in Clare regarding the Fiscal Stability referendum.
Party spokesman Anne Hayes said this week that thousands of leaflets have been delivered in the last few weeks and that canvassing is about to start.
“People see that austerity has failed in this state and in states across Europe where unemployment is risking and poverty and hardship are the only growth industries. This austerity treaty will hand over significant control of fiscal and budgetary matters to unelected EU officials.
“Whatever you may think of the Irish Government, at least citizens can change government and make them democratically accountable come election time. We cannot do this with EU officials who are not elected by Irish citizens and held accountable by them.”
She said that promises made in advance of the last European referendum had not been delivered. “The promises of jobs and recovery we hear from Government now are exactly what we heard in the Lisbon campaign-where are the Lisbon jobs?
“The Government is also using the same threats to bully people into voting yes. It is saying that if we reject the Austerity Treaty we will be denied European Stability Mechanism funding the future. This is simply not true. The blackmail clause is an empty threat. It has little if any legal force and conflicts with the primary mandate of the ESM to safeguard the stability of the Eurozone as a whole as written into the EU Treaties.
“A European Council summit in July of last year gave a guarantee that all states in EU programmes (like Ireland) will continue to receive support until they can return to the bond markets. The ESM is also not the only source of emergency funding available to EU member states who find themselves frozen out of the sovereign markets.
“The ESM has not even been ratified by this State. The Government continues to have a veto on it,” she concluded.