AN ANTI-LISBON Treaty group is to consider taking a constitutional challenge if the treaty referendum is rerun, it said yesterday.
The Campaign Against the EU Constitution said it had received legal advice that grounds could be found to bring a challenge to a second referendum.
The group is a left alliance which includes the Socialist Workers Party, the People's Movement, Sinn Féin, People Before Profit, and the Irish Anti-War Movement.
Former Green Party MEP Patricia McKenna, affiliated to the campaign through the People's Movement, said there were serious constitutional question marks hanging over the survey carried out after the referendum to find out why people voted the way they did.
She said a number of issues were involved in the Hanafin case, taken on foot of the divorce referendum in 1995, but the judgment made it quite clear the Government could not "go behind the backs of the people after a vote" to try and look for ways to get around their decision.
She also said if the Government decided to try to pass some parts of the Lisbon Treaty through the Dáil, that would open the door for a legal challenge because people had already voted on the treaty.
"I think the Government has to be very careful," she said.
Ms McKenna said the idea of having a referendum again without any change to the treaty was fundamentally undemocratic.
"I think it is a tragedy that our own head of state Brian Cowen has travelled all over Europe at the taxpayers' expense . . . conspiring behind our backs with other heads of state to ensure that this treaty will go through," she said.
She added that declarations to the treaty were of no value as they would have no legal status.
Michael Youlton, co-ordinator of the campaign and a member of the Irish Anti-War Movement, said all bets are off at the moment and if a legal challenge was necessary, the campaign would find the funds. Former Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins said: "What is different about this instance is that the moment the result was in . . . because it was contrary to the interest of the EU establishment . . . they began instantaneously to undermine and denigrate that result," he said.
