Lisbon Essays

Lisbon Essay (11): Both long and short term investors require certainty…

Mick Fealty on September 16, 2009, 2:30 pm

| Readers 10

Today Senator Paschal Donohue rises to Stephen Kinsella’s challenging essay (LE5) makes a case that actually a Yes or a No does have the capacity to influence Ireland’s economic future. The result either way, he argues, will affect two crucial factors: confidence in those who will be asked to shoulder the country’s substantial and growing debt; and the potential for the country to continue to attract FDI if and when the ‘faucet’ resumes its flow. He argues that a No …

Lisbon Essay (10): Ireland’s opportunity to kill Lisbon in the water..

Mick Fealty on September 15, 2009, 3:00 pm

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Nigel Farage of UKIP has spent a lot of the last week trying to make up for something of deficit in credible speakers on the No side of the Argument. The UKIP leader here argues that the Irish people wider responsibilities than just their own futures. With less than 1% of the European Union’s population Ireland is only country that’s allowed a free vote on whether Lisbon goes ahead or not, and offers substantial evidence that a second No vote …

Lisbon Essay (9): They have not secured a single change to the text of the Lisbon Treaty

Mick Fealty on September 14, 2009, 3:00 pm

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Eoin O’Broin lays out the core of Sinn Fein’s objections to the Lisbon Treaty. In line with the party’s position just after last year’s vote, their objection is primarily that nothing of any substance has changed in the meantime. The guarantees and the solemn declaration in favour of workers rights do not change in slightest the text of the document. He also points out that the self amending clause in the treaty undermines the Crotty (et al) judgements and means …

Lisbon Essay (8): The deadening paradoxes of the Lisbon debate…

Mick Fealty on September 11, 2009, 3:00 pm

| Readers 13

Last one of the week is from our own Brian Walker who lays out an interesting historical perspective on the matter that too often dares not speak its own name on the Yes side of this debate. The vexed issue of Irish sovereignty. It’s a far from trivial concern, as Joe Higgins laid out in Lisbon Essay 4, but Walker notes “…supremacy, like sovereignty, does not carry through into all levels of everything”. Instead he predicts the problem the European …

Lisbon Essay (7): Slowness, endless negotiations and bureaucracy are the EU’s strength…

Mick Fealty on September 10, 2009, 2:30 pm

| Readers 11

It seems sometimes that the integrity of Ireland’s ancient struggle with its neighbour has left it in a semi detached mode in its relations with (and historical memory of) the wider interests (and the conflicts therein) of the rest of Europe. Rónán O’Brien writes of his conviction that the European Union has done much to mediate the effects of raw nationalism and brought peace to much of a continent that was previously continuously shaped by ethnic and nationalist warring… He …

Lisbon Essay (1): The treaty would isolate Ireland – a ‘No’ vote would free her

Mick Fealty on September 2, 2009, 3:00 pm

| Readers 29

My post yesterday on the poor quality of the debate around Lisbon brought positive feedback from some unexpected quarters… It also brought in a short blog essay contribution from the young editor of the Eurosceptic European Journal, Jim McConalogue. It marks the first a series of guest essays on the broad subject of Lisbon that will run each morning here on Slugger from the No, Yes, and no fixed opinion camps right up until polling day on Friday 2nd October. …