Day 26: The Fiscal Treaty

Emer Costello has slammed the NO side for their anti-ECJ remarks calling them Anti-European. Gerry Adams calls for a No Vote at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis. Fianna Fáil say SF are deliberate causing confusion among voters, while the Workers Party say that Treaty Proponents should not take solace from recent polls.

Emer Costello, MEP, has said that opponents of the Stability Treaty are anti-EU and according to her this is because they continue to demonize the European Court of Justice (ECJ). She says that Sinn Féin's claim that the ECJ would impose fines countries that fail to meet their targets is simply untrue. Another country signed up to the Fiscal Treaty would need to ask the ECJ to judge weather a country has met their targets before the ECJ can adjudicate such a matter, it is not until a country continues to miss their targets that the ECJ can fine the country up to 0.1% of their GDP. These are the same powers that they have in The Nice Treaty. She concludes "The Treaty's opponents demonizing of the ECJ reflects not their opposition to the Stability Treaty but their knee-jerk hostility to the EU."

In his presidential address to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis Gerry Adams called for a NO vote. He asked "When considering what way to vote people need to ask themselves if the austerity of recent budgets led to jobs and growth?" He continued "the answer is obvious, the answer is no." He believes that we now can fire elected representatives by not voting for them in general elections, as we have in the past, but into the future we cannot fire or hire unaccountable European bureaucrats.

Fianna Fail have stated that Sinn Féin's message is there to confuse voters. Timmy Dooley, Fianna Fáil Director of Elections, said today that Sinn Féin are only telling half the story to voters. He was in Killarney looking for a YES vote. Timmy Dooley said that Gerry Adams had said in his leaders speech at the weekend that "Funding will be provided, and I quote, where it is indispensable to safeguard the financial stability of the euro area as a whole and of its Member States". Timmy Dooley says that Gerry Adams failed to tell voters that the ESM treaty then sets out strict conditions on receiving such funding as it says the " ESM will be conditional, as of 1 March 2013, on the ratification of the TSCG [Fiscal Stability Treaty] by the ESM Member concerned."

In response to the recent Treaty polls, which show increase in support for the Treaty, The Workers Party has said that the "Opinion Polls offer no solace for Treaty proponents". It says that there is slow slippage from a yes vote. Padraig Mannion, EU spokesperson for the Workers Party said "The government are desperately trying to foist this treaty onto the Irish people by fear tactics while refusing to engage in any serious debate. More and more the Irish people are realizing that this treaty, a product of the backward economic philosophy of the Merkozy alliance, is being rejected throughout the largest countries of the EU.”