I thank the Chairman and will make a statement on behalf of the delegation from the Irish Alliance for Europe. We will welcome questions afterwards. I thank the Chairman and the committee for the invitation to speak today and particularly thank the secretariat and the clerk for organising this. It is a great honour to be invited to address a plenary session of this committee in Leinster House.
I do not propose to spend a long time extolling the benefits and details of the Lisbon treaty, of which there are many, but I will touch on a number of issues. This treaty is about making the European Union more efficient and effective so it can deal with the challenges of the 21st century. That is the message we are successfully communicating to the Irish people.
Since Ireland joined the EU 35 years ago, it is clear we have come a long way. As a nation we have benefitted from the peace and prosperity the EU has brought. As a country, we have helped to reshape the EU to meet the challenges that face us. As a people we must now decide if we are ready to take the next step to achieve a European Union that will work harder for us as a country. Of the many issues that we will face in the future, climate change will be the major challenge. Scientists now estimate that by 2030, the damage done by climate change will be irreversible. It is the single biggest threat to the future of our children, but we cannot leave it for them to deal with. We must create the tools to fix the problem now.
The Lisbon treaty makes combatting climate change one of the fundamental objectives of the EU, equal in importance to the goals of peace and prosperity in Europe and the free movement of people, goods and services. It backs this objective, extending the Union's areas of action to include energy, transport and the environment. It introduces a whole new energy chapter which requires the Union to move towards sustainable development and renewable energy as well as to step up the fight against pollution. The environmental movement has always said that we need a binding legal requirement to fight climate change that is not subject to the whims of politicians, with the greatest respect to those present. This treaty creates this imperative to deal with the problem and the means with which to do it. Ironically, many of those opposed to the treaty have been calling for this for some time.
In the past ten years, 500,000 women and children were trafficked into the EU. In the past 12 months, €50 billion worth of drugs were imported into Europe by criminal gangs who for years have profited from human misery, the destruction of our communities and the undermining of our social fabric. Europe needs to be capable of dealing with these problems. The Lisbon treaty extends co-operation into areas of border controls, police administration and crime prevention, equipping the Union with the potential to deal with among other things, the scourges of drugs, sex trafficking and cross-border crime. We know that this can work. Using a provision introduced in the Amsterdam treaty, last year police forces working through Europol and Eurojust arrested a paedophile in Spain, seized his computer and, using information on the hard drive, broke up one of the largest child sex offender rings in Europe, making over 500 arrests across the EU. How many children are now safe because of actions that could not have happened without the Amsterdam treaty?
Ireland has the best of both worlds in this area of the treaty. We can opt into any policy initiative we want while at the same time preserving our right to protect our unique legal system. When we talk to people about the treaty, these are the things that we should be talking about — things that affect real everyday lives, saving the planet, securing our prosperity, protecting children and stopping crime. This is what the Lisbon treaty is about — real changes on real issues that affect real people
How does the treaty do this? The Lisbon treaty proposes a series of technical changes to the EU's institutions that, taken together, will make the EU more effective and efficient so that it can work better. The new permanent president of the Council will lead to greater co-ordination and continuity among the governments of member states. The new high representative will be a stronger and louder voice for the EU on the world stage. The new voting system at the Council of Ministers will make it easier for the Council to make decisions that can benefit all the people of Europe. The changes to the make-up of the European Commission will allow it to act with greater efficiency and more effectively. Taken together, the vast number of institutional reforms are intended to deliver an EU that can cope with the challenges that face us today and will confront us tomorrow.
I would like to turn my attention to some of the lies that the "No" side has peddled over the past number of months. These are some of the lies we are likely to hear in the coming weeks. We are told by Libertas and Sinn Féin, who seem to have a new concern for our low corporate tax rate, that under Article 113 of the treaty, the European Court of Justice will be empowered to overrule our low tax rates because they are a "distortion of competition". This is manifestly false. The full text of the new Article 113 reads:
The Council shall, acting unanimously in accordance with a special legislative procedure and after consulting the European Parliament and the economic and social committee, adopt provisions for the harmonisation of legislation concerning turnover taxes, excise duties and other forms of indirect taxation to the extent that such harmonisation is necessary to ensure the establishment and the functioning of the internal market and to avoid distortion of competition.
This has been misrepresented at hundred of meetings around the country in the past six months. It is clear that this article requires all the member states to agree to any actions under it, thereby confirming the Irish veto in this area. More importantly it clearly refers to indirect taxation such as VAT and excise and has nothing to do with corporate taxes whatsoever. As taxation is a power reserved to the member states, the European Court of Justice could have no role to rule on a country's tax rates in any area. This is the article that was used to establish the Common Market. We have already largely harmonised these areas of customs duties when the Single European Act came into force in the early 1990s. Would IBEC, the IDA and the 30 other business organisations that we have signed up to the Irish Alliance for Europe — companies such as Microsoft and others — support the alliance and be in favour of the treaty if there was any threat to our tax rate? I do not think so.
We have been told by Cóir, Érin go Bragh and Libertas, depending on which part of the country they are in, that Ireland will be required to introduce abortion under the provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and that it would be considered a "service" under the EU's services directive. Both of these claims are completely untrue. Let me be absolutely clear, there is nothing in this treaty or in European law generally that will impact on the right of the people to decide this issue for themselves. A protocol was attached to the Maastricht treaty in 1992 that specifically protects Article 40.3.3° of Bunreacht na hÉireann, the article that protects the right to life of the unborn. There will be no change in this country's stance on abortion. That is a fact. It is shameful that the "No" side has stooped to abusing such a highly emotive issue in order to try to scare people into voting "No". Chairman, the incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights into the Lisbon treaty expands the rights of Irish citizens and puts them at the centre of the EU's legal processes.
We are again hearing the old chestnut that the end of neutrality is nigh. We have been told this about every European treaty in every referendum since we joined in 1973. The Lisbon treaty will apparently mean the end of our neutrality. We will be forced to increase military spending and to fight other states' wars. None of these claims is any more true than it was about the other treaties, Nice, Amsterdam, Maastricht or the Single European Act. Article 28 specifically states that a common defence will only come into force "in accordance with [each states'] respective constitutional requirements", which in Ireland means a referendum. Irish neutrality is particularly protected in the treaty's provisions that recognise it cannot "prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States" and, of course, our veto over any European military action is maintained. No Irish troops can be deployed abroad unless both the Government and the Oireachtas agree and there is a UN mandate. That is a triple lock. There is no mechanism in the treaty to force Ireland to increase military spending. It simply talks about improving our military capabilities in term of our commitments to peacekeeping. We have a long and proud tradition of peacekeeping. It has been stated consistently throughout the debate that military spending should not be increased.
I believe it is a national imperative and not a European imperative that our men and women engaged in peacekeeping duties on the front-line in Chad are protected. There are more than 30 different types of engine oil being used in different vehicles. That creates significant problems for the logistics. We must ensure that the French troops in Chad are using the same radios as the Irish troops so that we do not have what the Americans call "friendly fire". This is no different from the same commitment that has been in successive programmes for Government.
The genesis of the Irish Alliance for Europe is from the alliance for Europe that was set up to fight for the ratification of the Nice treaty after its defeat in the first referendum. It was felt then and it is felt now that putting the case for Ireland in Europe should not be left just to the political parties. Civic society must step up to the plate. Europe is important for Ireland and so wide-ranging is its impact on every sector of society that we have come together to put the case for this treaty in a way that transcends politics. The Irish Alliance for Europe is an organisation that spans every section of Irish society. We represent a coming together of organisations of people from every walk of life, business people, farmers, trade unionists, students, academics and environmentalists to name but a few. We seek to offer a view of the treaty from people who have spent their entire working lives seeing the benefits of Ireland's engagement with Europe. These are experts and lay people who passionately believe in this treaty and will bring their passion, knowledge and experience to the "Yes" campaign. We have already launched our nationwide poster campaign, with the slogan we believe encapsulates what the treaty is about: "Let's Make Europe Work Better". We will provide a series of spokespeople for local and national media and we will run a bus tour of the country. The committee members are welcome to join us on that. We have strong regional campaigns in Munster and in the west.
However, we cannot win this campaign by ourselves. We welcome the fact that in the past week and a half the three main political parties have joined us in launching large-scale campaigns to secure a "Yes" vote and, in particular, the strong emphasis that our new Taoiseach, Deputy Brian Cowen, has placed on making the positive case for the treaty since his election last week. This is probably responsible for the recent upswing in support for the treaty in the opinion polls. However, it is equally true that when one looks at the full spectrum of polls since January, the only conclusion one can honestly draw is that the result of the referendum is still up for grabs by both sides. Victory is far from certain.
The only way the treaty will be passed is if we engage with the public on the substance of the issues on a one-to-one basis. The alliance does not have the resources to knock on every door in the country, but the political parties do. There is strong evidence that the more people know about the treaty, the basic facts as well as the more complicated arguments, the more they are likely to support it. If that engagement is not done on a substantial level, the chances of this treaty being passed will be significantly reduced. We welcome the fact that every house has received a copy of the Department of Foreign Affairs guide and will receive the guide to the treaty from the Referendum Commission that was launched today. Both of these will help to close the knowledge gap in the public mind which, until now, has allowed the "No" side to perpetuate myths and lies about the content of the treaty and the impact it will have on Europe and Ireland.
We should not be afraid of the details of the treaty in the debate that will be held in the next four weeks. The answers to all the questions of the Irish people can be found among its pages. We owe the people a vigorous campaign, a great debate and, above all, the truth. On 12 June, the citizens will decide whether we are to continue to be at the centre of Europe. It is up to all of us to help ensure they make the correct and informed choice.