LIBERTAS LEADER Declan Ganley has claimed tax harmonisation “will be right back on the agenda” if there is a Yes vote in the Lisbon referendum.
Mr Ganley appeared on the Today with Pat Kennyshow on RTÉ Radio One yesterday. He took part in a debate on the treaty with Prof Brigid Laffan, principal at the UCD college of human sciences and chairwoman of Ireland for Europe.
“Tax harmonisation, if we were to vote Yes, will be right back on the agenda,” he said.
Prof Laffan rejected Mr Ganley’s argument.
“This treaty does not give those powers. This is another canard that’s been thrown into this. Declan Ganley goes on and on about these things, handing over industrial policy,” she said.
“Why would the American Chamber of Commerce support a treaty that did that?” Mr Ganley said this was because they were taking advice from Prof Laffan, whom he described as “the Jean Monnet professor bought and paid for by this Brussels structure”.
Prof Laffan said she would leave aside the insult to her academic credentials.
“There is no way that either an Irish Government that knows how dependent the Irish economy is on these things or major companies that employ thousands of people in this jurisdiction would favour a treaty that handed over those competences,” she said.
Laws at European level were not made by “faceless bureaucrats” but by elected ministers, she said. However, she believed there were “forces” in the United Kingdom who wanted to see an Irish No vote.
“They want a Europe which fragments, they want a Europe which is multi-tiered and [David] Cameron would want, if we vote No, then there will be a referendum in the United Kingdom . . . and we will end up with an EU that is not in Ireland’s interests.” Mr Ganley accused her of putting forward “wacko conspiracy theories”.
He added: “It is condescending to the Irish people to say that there is some grand conspiracy going on.”
Mr Ganley said he respected the fact that Prof Laffan was a committed pro-European.
He also said that he could not abide what the United Kingdom Independence Party stood for.
