Monday, May 12, 2008
Breaking down the border
In the aftermath of last week’s Investment Conference, Tom McGurk’s been examining just what the North has to offer potential investors and taking a longer look at how the new political and economic realities are likely to impact on traditional unionist attitudes to the border.
Chris Donnelly @ 08:34 PM
Slug
Though I would add that, any economic powers that Europe exercises in Ireland have been placed there by Irish people, by Irish voters and by a sovereign Irish Republic. If Ireland has pooled any aspects of its sovereignty with other European nations, that has been Ireland’s sovereign decision. Ireland also retains a sovereign right to secede from the EU at any time. But the RoI has been able to make the trade-offs when necessary to make European membership work for its citizens, without a need for all the existential angst and barely-concealed xenophobia that you see in Britain. If ever the Irish people think the balance has tilted too far towards Brussels, then as a sovereign people they retain the right to walk away. Sovereignty allows them that freedom - a freedom that we in the north do not have.
Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 02:55 PMBilly, the design of a ‘society within a society’ or a ’state within a state‘ is IMO very aptly labelled self-imposed apartheid. Brady used the quote so I presume he identified with it, notwithstanding his apparent lack of appreciation of the timing of the ‘design’.
Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 02:58 PMNevin
Bullshit.
“Apartheid” is not an adjective. It was a specific system of discrimination practiced in a particular place at a particular time. It was imposed by a strong government to repress a disenfranchised and oppressed section of the population.
To describe any nationalist retreat from the hostility of the Orange junta as “apartheid” is not merely in poor taste, nor is it not merely an inaccurate description.
It is a lie, and a lie that you have been pushing here long enough.
With your mendacity and dishonesty and lies, you have succeeded in sucking the life out of what might have been an interesting debate. Well done. It’s what you set out to do, isn’t it?
Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 03:19 PMKensei, do you think that NICRA should have been ‘honest’ about the nature of discrimination here? I give you the example of Newry but it wasn’t the only place where Unionist, Nationalist and Independent councillors were able to exercise their power of patronage.
You’ll find the Bardon references in pp499-502 which confirm the apartheid mindset that was in operation at the time of the formation of the two states.
The southern Presbyterians could have remained silent but instead they chose to endorse the institutions of the new state and called on their members to support them. Republicans sometimes talk of ‘Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter’ but when they achieved power Ne Temere remained in place and they constructed a Catholic state for a Catholic people.
Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 03:20 PMNevin
“Republicans sometimes talk of ‘Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter’ but when they achieved power Ne Temere remained in place and they constructed a Catholic state for a Catholic people.”
I’m not going to defend the strongly Catholic ethos that existed down south for a long time, nor will I be dishonest and pretend I can’t understand how uncomfortable many Protestants must have been as a result. But Ne Temere? That’s the Catholic Church - the Irish state had no powers over that one, I’m afraid.
But my earlier point still stands. If Protestants felt alienated from the Republic, that was a failure for the Republic. Catholic alienation from the northern state represented success for the northern state.
You’re comparing insensitivity with vindictiveness.
Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 04:00 PM“That’s the Catholic Church - the Irish state had no powers over that one, I’m afraid.”
Yet there did seem to be a rather seamless relationship between Church and State, Billy.
I’d have thought that alienation represented failure on the part of both states and that the southern state’s efforts circa 1970 to protect its own institutions, including the Catholic Church ones, at the expense of mayhem and murder here is hardly a glowing example of ‘sensitivity’.
Then there was some ludicrous claim about cherishing all the children of the nation equally ..
Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 09:39 PMwell the same could be said of the UK where the head of state is also the head of a church, or indeed in NI were preachers are often elected to high office!
Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 09:52 PMBilly, I was referring to the self-imposed apartheid/separation that was conceived here so there’s no need to run away off to South Africa ...
Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 09:54 PMNevin,
your concern for the plight of southern Protestants is quite touching. It’s up there with our old friend Davros’s.Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 09:59 PMJonny, I can think of one such preacher from a rather small denomination who, having reached the top of the greasy pole, is about to begin a fairly rapid descent. The man with a supposed hotline to All Hallows has already gone ..
Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 10:06 PMGeorge, I focussed more on their magnanimity than their plight. Can you say the same for your old friend?
Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 10:12 PM“If ever the Irish people think the balance has tilted too far towards Brussels, then as a sovereign people they retain the right to walk away. Sovereignty allows them that freedom - a freedom that we in the north do not have.” - Billy Pilgrim
Be careful about that assumption. The reason we are the only State in the EU to have a referendum is because the Supreme Court established in the case of Crotty v. An Taoiseach, 1997, that sovereignty under the Irish constitution resided with the people and not with the State. Ergo, the State cannot ratify the Treaty without an amendment to the constitution being approved in referendum by the people. Here is the proposed amendment:
“The State may ratify the Treaty of Lisbon signed at Lisbon on the 13th day of December 2007, and may be a member of the European Union established by virtue of that Treaty. No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State that are necessitated by membership of the European Union, or prevents laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the said European Union or by institutions thereof, or by bodies competent under the treaties referred to in this section, from having the force of law in the State.”
Notice that we are passing sovereignty from the Irish people to the EU? Our constitution will become subservient to the EU. No longer are the Irish people the supreme authority, and no longer is Bunreacht na hÉireann the law of the land. If the EU passes a law that forbids us to withdraw from the EU, then that law takes precedence over Irish law. As you said, “sovereignty allows them that freedom.” However, we are passing that sovereignty to the EU, and with it, our freedom. Effectively, the EU can do whatever it likes. It has the sovereignty and vetoes can become worthless entities at the stroke of an EU superstate pen.
Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 11:10 PMDave:
Notice that we are passing sovereignty from the Irish people to the EU? Our constitution will become subservient to the EU. No longer are the Irish people the supreme authority, and no longer is Bunreacht na hÉireann the law of the land.
Article 29.4, subsection 10 of Bunreacht na hÉireann, currently in force, reads as follows (emphasis mine, to reflect that which you used in your quote above):
No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State which are necessitated by the obligations of membership of the European Union or of the Communities, or prevents laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the European Union or by the Communities or by institutions thereof, or by bodies competent under the Treaties establishing the Communities, from having the force of law in the State.
Please stop scaremongering.
Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 11:37 PMGerry, please stop surrendermongering. ;)
The provision in each amendment refers to the Treaty that is amends. This amendment refers to a new EU constitutional that supersedes Bunreacht na hÉireann, taking priority over it. In short, old boy, it isn’t related to a treaty on fishing rights: it’s a tad more consequential than that. Do you understand the difference? Do you know why it is not just another EU treaty?
Posted by on May 14, 2008 @ 11:58 PMIncidentally, it isn’t just Bunreacht na hÉireann that becomes subservient to the new EU constitution in the rehashed Reform Treaty (AKA Lisbon Treaty), Ireland’s Supreme Court also becomes subservient to the European Court of Justice. So, the new court of final appeal for Ireland becomes the ECJ: it is this new court that will interpret Bunreacht na hÉireann in accordance with the primacy of EU law. The “Declaration Concerning Primacy” also states that the treaties and the laws adopted by the union have primacy over the laws of member states - this is the first time an EU treaty has claimed primacy for EU law over the laws of member states. Considering that over three quarters of laws currently come from the EU and are rubberstamped domestically under the subsidiarity rule, transferring sovereignty to the EU in 35 new areas and extending the EU’s sovereignty in a further 40 existing areas will leave Ireland as a country that has surrendered democracy to the EU. Why bother elect legislators if almost all of our laws are imposed from the EU? As the Supreme Court (in the case of Crotty v. An Taoiseach, 1997) established: sovereignty under the Irish constitution resides with the people and not with the State. What this shower of self-serving quislings are asking the Irish people to do is to transfer the sovereignty that is invested in the people of Ireland to the EU, making the EU’s rehashed de facto constitution, and not Bunreacht na hÉireann, the law of the land, and making the ECJ, not the Supreme Court, the court of final appeal. We are actually being asked to dissolve the nation state and to transfer ownership of both the State and of ourselves to the EU. The quislings and clowns who say it isn’t so are badly misled.
Posted by on May 15, 2008 @ 01:45 AM
