REFERENDUM COMMISSION:IRELAND'S RIGHT to veto World Trade Organisation talks and maintain Constitutional safeguards on abortion will not be threatened by passage of the Lisbon Treaty, the Referendum Commission has said.
The intervention by the independent commission, chaired High Court judge Iarfhlaith O'Neill, was criticised by No campaigners. At a press conference yesterday Mr Justice O'Neill was initially unable to deal with questions concerning the rules governing the "solidarity pledge", under which EU states are expected to come to the aid of another member state facing a national crisis.
A question on this led to four minutes of silence while notes were checked.
World trade deals involving agriculture, trade and other issues can be blocked by Ireland at the moment "and this will remain the rule if Lisbon is ratified", said the commission.
"Decisions on agreements with one or more non-EU countries or international organisations are generally made by qualified majority voting.
"However, if that agreement includes an element on which unanimity is required for an internal EU decision, then the decision on the entire agreement must be made unanimously," said the commission.
Mr Justice O'Neill said Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution would not be affected by the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty: "Protocols have legal force - they have the same legal status as an article of the treaties. This protocol is EU law and it explicitly excludes Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution from any other EU law," he said.
Under Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution, the State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, "with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right". It also deals with the right to travel and the right to information.
Explaining the reason for offering clarifications, Mr Justice O'Neill said: "We were concerned about those issues because we realised that very substantial sections of the community were worried about them and, indeed, these are issues that could be decisive factors in how people vote.
"We felt it was our duty to properly explain what was in the treaties, that it was our statutory obligation to do so and intervene to dispel confusion," he said.
The commission said no extra exclusive powers were being assigned by member states to the EU under the treaty, though there were some areas - such as energy, space and climate change - where states had agreed to share powers with Brussels.
The right to veto - though almost never used - would be removed in a number of areas if voters agreed to ratify the treaty in the June 12th vote.
Asked if Ireland would be able to dictate how it would come to the aid of a fellow member state, Mr Justice O'Neill said, after some hesitation, that it "has to be consistent with Ireland's policy of neutrality".
He then went on: "I think the answer to that is that the actual engagement has to be agreed unanimously. The precise detail thereafter moves to QMV [qualified majority voting]."
The commission said "the arrangements for the control of implementing powers" was another of the issues moving from unanimity to qualified majority voting, but Mr Justice O'Neill was initially unable to explain what this meant. "It is quite difficult to be precise about what that means. There certainly isn't precision about it whereby you could say it applies to A, B, C or D," he said.
Fine Gael Wicklow TD Billy Timmins said the Referendum Commission's intervention showed that No campaigners "have got it wrong on virtually every issue", and they should now apologise to voters.
However, Sinn Féin TD Martin Ferris claimed that the commission's latest text confirmed his party's view that Ireland would lose its veto on international trade agreements, despite the clear tone to the contrary of its pronouncements.
The Irish Alliance for Europe said: "The time has now come for the united No front to issue an apology for their continuous lying to the electorate."
