VERBATIM REPORT OF SPEECH BY ANTHONY COUGHLAN Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Social Policy, Trinity College, Dublin Secretary of the National Platform TO THE FIFTH CONGRESS FOR DEMOCRACY, 2 February 2001

I am very honoured to have the opportunity here today to say some words to British friends and British democrats about aspects of the Treaty of Nice as it might affect the Republic of Ireland.

It was announced on national radio in Dublin last Friday that the government has accepted in principle that there will be a referendum on the Treaty of Nice and I think it can now be taken as inevitable that this will occur, probably in May or June. We will probably be the only state that will have such a referendum as it does not look likely to occur anywhere else. The reason for this is that the Irish government is very aware that if it does not have a referendum on Nice it will face a challenge in the Irish courts.

A peculiarity of the Irish constitution is that it is open to citizens to challenge transfers of sovereignty, which rest with the people, to Brussels. That is why every European Union or European Community Treaty in the past has been accompanied by a referendum in the Republic of Ireland. There have been a number of court cases, with some of which I have myself been associated, which have led to this and also on several occasions there were court challenges to the mode of conduct of a referendum in the Republic. When the Irish government found that it had to have referendums it then decided to spend public money entirely on one side and to allow very one-sided broadcasts. But constitutional challenges by Mr McKenna, and a case I myself took to court last year over the broadcasting issue, ensured that in the Republic public funds must be spent equally on both sides and there must be equality of coverage on radio and television.

This has been the result of the eurocritical movement in Ireland taking up these issues. The government knows this. It knows that the next referendum will have to be conducted on reasonably fair lines, at least as far as public resources are concerned, and is very much afraid of the growing eurocritical feeling in the Republic. The last referendum we had was on the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1998, when nearly 40% of voters voted no. This was a great surprise to the government. They are afraid that if there is a referendum in May or June or later this year the No vote would be higher again and the referendum may even be defeated. There is a substantial shift of public opinion in the Republic and I will list briefly some of the factors responsible for that.

The euro, whose dubious benefits we are currently experiencing, has certainly contributed to inflation, as Mr Wolfson mentioned this morning. There has been the fact that recently we were ticked off by the European Commission for having an expansionary budget at a time of high inflation. That censure may well be justified in a general objective sense, but it has caused resentment in Dublin that Brussels is laying down the law, and suggesting how we might conduct our budgetary policy. This is, of course, perfectly in line with what one can expect in a monetary union where the European Central Bank and the Commission have key influence on the member states' budgetary policies.

There is also the point made earlier by Mr Elliott and Mr Wolfson that the Irish Republic has benefited very much from a floating exchange rate. The principle single reason for our boom, I would suggest, was the fact that the period from 1993 to 1999, when we joined the eurozone, was the only period in the history of the Irish state when we actually floated the currency. The Irish growth rate doubled from 3-4%, which it had been in the 1970s and 1980s, to 7-8% which it has been since 1993. It doubled in the year 1993-94, and you will all remember what happened in 1993-94: the devaluation when we left the ERM and joined the broad band of the 30% rate which gave us a highly competitive exchange rate. And, of course the weakness of the euro in the two years since we joined it has continued to make the Irish economy extremely competitive. Before we left the ERM in 1993 the Irish pound was 100p sterling: it was one-tenth more valuable than the pound sterling. It is now down to 82p against sterling and it was down to 76p some months ago. That shows the high degree of competitiveness of the Irish currency vis a vis the pound sterling due to our exchange rate during the 1990s and more recently because the euro has been weak, though now of course it is rising. And if the dollar goes down in the coming period, which is possible, and the euro jumps up, it may well give the coup de grace to the Celtic tiger because of course we have benefited very much from the weakness of the euro recently.

We are also preparing for the introduction of the euro currency next January. Already there is a massive advertising campaign and many citizens are becoming uneasy about it because one thing is certain: changing over to paying for your beer and cinema tickets in euros rather than in pounds and pence is going to cause personal inconvenience to every citizen. I think all hell is going to break loose when this occurs and people realise for the first time what they have let themselves in for. And we are already moving in that direction.

Another issue that is causing disquiet in the Republic is the growing militarisation of the European Union. The Irish state has not been a member of NATO and has always been a neutral state but the move towards a rapid reaction force, the so-called "European army which is not an army", is causing considerable public disquiet among many citizens. Prodi, that egregious character who occasionally utters home truths, said some months ago "The sword and the currency are the two pillars of the nation state and we have changed that". They have the currency with the single currency and now they want the sword. These are the two key features of statehood and the rapid reaction force, and the raising of expenditure on the Irish defence budget to finance our commitment to provide soldiers for that force, are exciting considerable public disquiet and will figure in the referendum campaign in the next few months.

The group of which I personally am secretary, the National Platform, seeks to provide critical information on these developments to people on every side of the political spectrum, left, right and centre, and we will fulfil that role in this referendum campaign. I would like to appeal for solidarity and whatever help can be given to the Irish referendum effort from democrats in Britain.

We need help just as the Danes did. In that connection I would like to make the point that my group is affiliated to the TEAM information exchange - the European Anti-Maastricht Alliance - which many of you have heard of. I am a Board member of that, together with Nigel Spearing, who I am sure is known to many of you. TEAM, set up in Copenhagen in 1997, now encompasses some forty different eurocritical groups in fifteen different countries, on the left, right and centre of the political spectrum. The only point in its constitution is that it will not take racists or fascists. So it has a very broad support base and it seeks to link people together in different countries to provide information. Several of the major British eurodemocratic/eurocritical groups, some of which are here, are affiliated to it either as members or observers, among them the Campaign for an Independent Britain, the Bruges Group, the Democracy Movement, the Labour Euro Safeguards Campaign, the Green Party, the United Kingdom Independence Party and others.

TEAM seeks to provide information and encourage people on left, right and centre. Its Board is currently considering the setting up of an international EU referendum fund to solicit financial support for the various countries that will from now on be holding referendums on European Union treaties. The first of these will be Ireland in a few months' time. Down the road there will be a British referendum.

I was in Malta recently trying to counter the europhile propaganda of my Prime Minister in that heroic country, where there is a powerful movement against accession and where public opinion is predominantly on the No side. Brussels is very worried about the lack of bipartisanship in Malta in favour of joining the EU because the Maltese Labour Party and the trade union movement is very much against it and significant portions of Catholic opinion, which is very important in Malta, are also against it. They are going to have a referendum within a year and we hope that this international referendum fund set up by TEAM with appropriate sponsors will also solicit and help to channel international support and financial aid to these various countries holding referendums, because of course Brussels is doing the opposite. It is pouring money into places like Malta and it will attempt - if the threat of court action does not inhibit it - to do so in Ireland, because the Commission always interferes and can be expected to interfere in the Irish referendum campaign.

So I will just make that point and say that if such a fund is set up by TEAM in the near future, as is likely, I hope that British democrats will feel that this international cause of democracy against Brussels eurofederalism will merit support and that you will do your best to support it financially. I believe myself that the sum of £150,000-£200,000 would make a huge difference in the Irish referendum campaign. We are part of an international movement in defence of national democracy. We are internationalists and by defending our own national statehood, our own national democracy, against the attempts of Brussels to arrogate to itself the sword and the currency, we are both democrats nationally and of course good internationalists. So as an internationalist, as an Irishman, as a friend of British democracy, I appeal to you for all the help and support you can give us in our referendum campaign in Ireland.

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