Lisbon II

Just so I understand this correctly, let me rephrase in my own words the 3 ‘special sections’ on the Lisbon Treaty as they will now apply to Ireland.

Section A says that we can keep our two-faced stance on abortion, keeping a messed up section of the Constitution in place while continuing to export our abortions to the UK.

Section B says that we can keep our ludicrously low corporate tax rates that encourages tax farming and dodgy financial dealings that give us an unfair advantage over our esteemed European colleagues in competing for FDI.

Section C says that while we are in favour of EU solidarity in defence matters, we don’t want any of our guys to have to go anywhere where they might actually have do any fighting or dying on behalf of the ‘community’ we have benefitted from so much and are such big fans of.

Finally, while demanding that we don’t have to behave like other Europeans, we want to be sure that our voices are heard above all others so, even though we are massively over-represented in the Parliament, we also insist on having a Commissioner of our own.

Oh yes, “we are the young Europeans”, all right. The young, spoiled rotten, hypocritical Europeans.

None of which changes my personal view that this document, which has been rejected by the French and Dutch peoples, both of whom have vastly stronger ‘Euro’ credentials than we ‘Oirish’, is not the right path for European development.

I trust by now we are all well aware of the true costs of correcting missteps in development.