The Lisbon Treaty: The OSF View

This is an interview with Marcas O' Mhaoldomhnaigh, Ógra Shinn Féin National PRO.

Can you sum up, in 30 words or less, why OSF are opposed to the Lisbon Treaty?

Ógra Shinn Féin are opposed to the Lisbon Treaty because if passed it would result in a

further militarized EU where smaller states have less say. While further undermining workers rights it

also contains a Revision Procedure which would allow heads of state remove vetoes in particular areas in the future.

We've all seen the Sinn Fein posters about increased militarisation in the EU if the Treaty is passed.

Explain briefly how the Treaty will enshrine militarisation if it is passed.

If passed the Lisbon Treaty would require member states to increase their military capacities.

The treaty also states that in the event of "armed aggression" being directed at a member state then all

other members states are required to intervene or provide assistance (Art.188R). This undermines Irish neutrality.

However this is not all, the Treaty also talks about "assisting third countries in combating terrorism in their territories".(Art.28)

This part is particularly disturbing as it could justify the use of troops in places like Afghanistan.

Would OSF be in favour of a new Treaty? If so, what would OSF like to see in a new treaty?

ÓSF are pro-Europe and if a new treaty which protected Workers Rights, Irish neutrality and many of the other issues we have highlighted

were to be put forward then I believe we would support it. (Please note I can't say for definite we would as it would have to be put before the SF Ard Comhairle,

however assuming everything we had outlined was protected etc. then I would see no reason why we would oppose it).

A group called Generation Yes has been targeting young people out and telling them to vote Yes. Does the Treaty have anything in it that may specifically concern Youth voters?

First off I would like to say something about Generation Yes. This group has consistently criticized opposition groups by stating that we have not been dealing with the text of the treaty ( http://www.generationyes.ie/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/sfblinkers ) while saying that they have. This is untrue, SF and many of the other groups have consistently dealt with the text of the treaty while groups like GY have resorted to laughable scaremongering such as saying that "Some people think Ireland will have to leave the EU, others think there isn’t a legal way to do this. No one knows for certain what will happen if we vote ‘no’." ( http://www.generationyes.ie/lisbon-treaty-guide/ ). Well perhaps if GY knew anything about how the EU works they would realize that no country can be marginalised under the current EU, nor can we leave unless we actually vote to remove ourselves from the EU. However if the LT is passed then, in the future, a situation where countries may be forced out could arise.

I would also question the alleged "independence" of a group whos first meeting was held at IBEC headquarters in Dublin.

Does the Treaty have anything in it that may specifically concern Youth voters? Why should Youth voters vote No?

The EU certainly concerns youth voters. It is about the future direction of the European Union.

If young people want to see Europe where workers rights are protected, where Irish neutrality is not undermined and where we have a

strong voice in Europe they should vote no. The government had a strong mandate to go back to Europe and demand a renegotiated treaty.

They failed the Irish people in this regard and are forcing them to vote again on the same treaty. Young people should vote no, to allow a better treaty to be negotiated which does not give more power to larger states or facilitate a "race to the bottom" in terms of

publuic services.

For a more democratic and de-militarised Europe, people should vote No.


Many thanks to Marcas O' Mhaoldomhnaigh for his time and patience.

The Lisbon Treaty: The CYM View

I'm starting a series of articles which are interviews with people opposed to the Lisbon Treaty.

First up is Gareth Murphy, General Secretary of the Connolly Youth Movement (CYM).

NF: Sum up for us, in 30 words or less, why the CYM is opposed to the Lisbon Treaty?

GM: The Lisbon Treaty further erodes the sovereignty of member-states and gives further power and policy control over to unelected bureaucrats. This Treaty actually rewards those that have driven the economic crisis that is putting ordinary workers and their families out of work. (Not quite 30 words but that's concise enough.)

A lot of people have a lot to say about the provisions made or not made in the Treaty regarding Worker's Rights. Sum up for us briefly the situation regarding Worker's Rights in the Treaty.

The Charter of Fundamental Rights is subject to non-interference with the ‘general interest’ of the EU that is the common market. These rights are therefore not fundamental but marketised –made subject to the market. The unelected European Court of Justice will decide where and when these rights are applicable and when not. We have seen several cases over the last number of years where the ECJ has came down firmly on the side of big business and against workers rights and trade union rights.

What does the CYM make of the intrusion of big businesses like Intel and Ryanair into the debate on the Yes side?

Our NO vote rocked the establishment. Big business and their bureaucrats in Brussels were not at all happy with the expressed wish of the Irish people (just like that of the French and Dutch before us). This time around the YES side is taking no chances so they have pulled out the celebrities and the big bucks to bully citizens into voting a certain way. This is EU democracy at work. Today, as we speak, there are thousands of unregistered and unfiltered lobbyists wining and dining the authors of legislating that increasingly impacts every part of our lives. This is how Europe works and we oppose it.

Similarly, what does the CYM make of the intrusion of the UK Independence Party into the debate on the No side?

There are many different voices on the No side. In Ireland we have trade unionists and peoples voices, we also have a catholic part of the No side and also in Libertas and Declan Ganley a business group against Lisbon.

There are complex reasons as to why people on the right are opposed to the Treaty and UKIP are most certainly on the right. They see some of the anti-trust and monopoly regulation of the EU as intereference in the market and in business and so oppose.

However UKIP and Libertas are correct in identifying the loss of sovereignty that will occur post-Lisbon. UKIP and their allies have also done enormous research into the waste of money and the cost of EU membership to ordinary citizens. This research is useful for all of us to use.

Does the CYM see a future for Ireland in Europe?

Europe is a geographic entity. Whether we like it or not Ireland is part of Europe. We also share many commonalities with the people of the continent and it makes perfect geographic sense that Europe should forge trading and economic links. However the EU is a political project. From day one, and one must only read Monnet and Schumman etc to see, this has been a project to build a federal state without ever telling the people so. It has been about manipulation and abuse.

The CYM are very much opposed to this imperialist (for it cant be anything but that given the federalisation of the large capitalist powers in Europe) state.

There are living and developing examples of alternative means of trading within geographic speheres. Where states come together and agree upon cooperation for mutual benefit. ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America) is a fine example of this.

People of Europe must fight to reclaim sovereignty, reclaim control and step by step build alliances and an alternative means of cooperation based upon the needs of people and not big business.

Many thanks to Gareth Murphy, General Secretary of the Connolly Youth Movement for his time and patience.

Interview with People Before Profit Councillor Joan Collins

Today I spoke with Councillor Joan Collins of People Before Profit who represents the Crumlin/Kimmage ward of Dublin City Council (DCC). Councillor Collins is a well known opponent of the bin tax, high-rise apartment blocks (and abuse of rezoning schemes in DCC) and the cutbacks to Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin (Crumlin Hospital). A councillor since 2004, Councillor Collins works in An Post and has been active in the trade union movement all her life.

NF: A lot of smaller leftist parties and left-leaning independents were elected in the last local elections. Do you think this is the start of a change in Irish politics, a protest vote or a combination of the two?

JC: I’d say it was a mixture of both. I think there is a change in the way people are thinking, obviously because of what has happened over the last year, the impact the cuts are having on people, how quickly they’ve come and how the government has been in the process.

Everyone knew what was happening a few years ago. Developers knew. People on the street knew what was happening because of all the apartments sitting empty. I remember people telling me “ah there’s an apartment building there; fifty apartments and not a person in one.” People knew that there was a downturn coming and the goverment tried to pretend it wasn’t happening.

We went into an official recession last November, so people would’ve seen it developing over a period of time. I think people are very very angry about the inaction of the government and the attack on ordinary peeople that was the last budget. The people that caused this are getting away with it; they’re the ones that are sitting pretty on their big pensions while we’re getting pension levies and cutbacks in our hospitals and communities.

People are seeing people like myself, activists who have been around a long time, as people who’ll kick Fianna Fáil out.


Do you predict a growth for People Before Profit in the future? Will you build on your five seats in DCC and challenge for a Dáil seat?

Yeah we got five council seats across Dublin which was a huge breakthrough as this was the first election we really campiagned as an organised force.

At People Before Profit we want to develop the movement now. I think People Before Profit is a good, catchy idea- it’s putting people before the greed, cronyism and profiteering we’ve had for years in this country.

We are in talks with the Tipperary Workers and Unemployed Action Group, who have fourteen councillors across Tipperary and fourty-three percent of the vote, and they’ve been around for a long time. They also had a Dáil seat but lost it in the last General Election, like Joe Higgins did. We’re looking at linking up with them, and we’ve also been talking to people like Declan Bree in Sligo and Catherine Connolly in Galway, who’d be ex-Labour. Chris O’Leary in Cork who left the Green Party over their policies in government would be another one we’re talking to.

We’re looking at broadening it out now, we’ll be tallking to Joe Higgins and the Socialist Party because there’s a real need now for an alternative. To me Labour and Fine Gael aren’t real opposition. You could see that in Dublin where the working class didn’t really vote for Fine Gael, they know that they’re only a mirror image of Fianna Fáil.

Labour don’t seem to really have in them to go out into communities and get people organised. They talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk. When they were out canvassing for the local elections they were all talking about going it on their own, now they’re going in with Fine Gael on the DCC. People voted for real change, not the same old crap they;re giving us on that council. They’ve linked up with Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Fein and all for chairmans seats on the Special Policy Committees.

There’s definitely a need for a group like the People Before Profit Alliance, and I think we will grow. We’re really calling on people like Joe Higgins to organise and build a new Workers’ movement, and hopefully then we can work with him.

You’re very much a campaigner on issues like the bin tax and the cutbacks to Crumlin hospital. How important is it for a successful election campaign to be centred on issues like these?

Well it’s really part of the process. Following on from what I was saying earlier about Labour talking the talk but not walking the walk; well people like myself, Brid Smith and Richard Boyd-Barrett are actually out in the communities organising people to stop bad things happening and to push good things happening. We successfully stopped the sale of ten percent of Pearse Park to a private developer and we also stopped the building of the high-rise apartments there. We stopped the rezoning of the park, and now we’re trying to work with the clubs there to have them go to the council and say “this is about what we want, not what you want.”

I remember a while ago the council commissioned an architect to draw up a plan for Crumlin Village. There was a meeting called, and a lot of people were excited as they went down to it. All it was was five-storey developments from one end of the village to the other. He was asked did he ever put his foot inside Crumlin, did he know the history of Crumlin, and he said he never had set foot in Crumlin, didn’t know a thing about it. That was DCC sending a green light out to developers, saying that this is the sort of thing they’ll accept.

We also stopped that horrible development at the Ashleaf Shopping Centre, and An Bord Pleanala went on and castigated DCC for ever allowing it. You’d nearly wonder where the permission for the developments is coming from.

From there I talked to people in the area and set up the Dublin 12 Development Action Group, which a sort of an umbrella group for community activists which educates people about development law and planning law.

Campaigning on issues is really crucial to politics. It’s crucial for people to see that you’re there and you’re not just around at election time.

I recently saw your statement where you spoke out against the agreement in DCC where Fine Gael and Labour effectively decide mayoral and committee positions amongst themselves. What alternative agreement would you prefer?

Well I would have preferred if Labour had come out with a set of principles for the council and for the community. People like ourselves would then support them, we could be like a block against Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

What has been done in other areas, such as in Tipperary, is that the positions are rotated frequently so that each group in the council has a chance to advocate their own ideas. This year Fine Gael and Labour have said to the Tipperary Workers and Unemployed Action Group that they wouldn’t be supporting the policy of rotation anymore.

Ideally we’d have a directly elected Lord Mayor, which is an idea I’d fully support. I know Gormley has said that we’d have that system in place now, but unfortunately I can’t see that happening now.

I’d say what Minister Gormley was originally thinking was that he’s get a Green Lord Mayor of Dublin, but that’s not going to happen now.

So ideally the position of mayor and the other position would be either elected or rotated, so that there’s no alliances made and that it’s independent of the City Manager.

On Monday Emer Costello effectively got in by default. Mannix Flynn had said he’d run against Kevin Humphreys for Deputy Lord Mayor. We’d been told by two independents that they’d vote for Costello because she was in their constituency, but when it came to it they voted for Kevin Humphreys for Deputy aswell. They’d obviously both made a deal beforehand that they’d both vote for Labour.

Women are drastically under-represented in Irish politics. You were the only female candidate in the Crumlin/Kimmage constituency for the local elections, and you are now the only female councillor. How can women increase their representation in Irish politics?

It is a tough question to answer because without the social backup a lot of women you can’t access politics. I work in An Post and for years I was involved in unions all my life. What I always noticed was women were involved in their union at a young age, dropped away from the union as their family responsibilities grew and the came back into it as they grew older.

Unless radical things like workplace childcare start to happen it will be difficult to change.

For working-class women it’s even tougher. Politics takes money, and a lot of women just don’t have that money. However on our Area Committee (in DCC) now, there are six women and five men. But I would question what type of women and men we have in there. Ultimately it does come down to class politics. There’s very few working-class women in politics, but I think it something that you’d have to address over a period of time. Stopping globalisation and crony capitalism with democratic socialism is a way forward.

Many women, due to family and work commitments, just don’t have the time to get involved. By the time they get home from work they’re making dinner and putting the kids to bed, they just don’t have the time.

Do you think there is a mentality of “women never get elected, so what hope do I have?” among women?

I think so, women are sort of put into boxes in that way. The good thing is that women now are much more outgoing than they ever were when I was starting out, when we were all definitely put in a box. Hopefully seeing women like myself get elected will boost womens’ confidence that they can get elected.


Many thanks to Joan Collins for her time and patience

Interview with Labour Councillor Eric Byrne

I chatted recently to Councillor Eric Byrne of the Labour Party, who was returned in the Crumlin/Kimmage ward this month. Cllr. Byrne was first elected to Dublin City Council (DCC) in 1985, and was a member of Dáil Eireann from 1989-1992 and 1994-1997. Cllr Byrne is a member of of the Dublin 12 Drugs Task Force and Ballyfermot Local Area Partnership board, and helped to found the Fatima Mansions and Dolphin House Task Forces. Cllr.Byrne has kept a blog (here) since 2006, and also has a website at www.ericbyrne.ie. I was luckily able to ask Cllr. Byrne a few questions about his campaign, his use of social media and the Labour Party.

NF:What were the issues brought up the most on the doorsteps during you campaigning?

EB:Well the main issues brought up on the doorsteps were national issues. People generally only wanted to talk about national issues. Public Servants wanted to talk about the Pension Levy, the Elderly wanted to talk about the abolition of the Christmas bonus, and people only brought up topics and subjects that were national. Nobody really wanted to know about local issues like “will you fix that footpath”.

Let me explain my modus operandi when canvassing. Name Recognition is strong for me among people who have been living in the area for a few years, so the real challenge for me would be getting people who have recently moved into the area to vote for me. For new arrivals I’d invariably say; “There’s more to me than knocking on your door. Will you have a look at my website?” I’d have all my policies and updates on each local area on my website, so it’s really an easier way to communicate with people who wouldn’t speak to you on the doorstep.

Do you think your election, and the success of Labour nationally, was a reaction to the unpopularity of the government? Was it a protest vote?

There’s no doubt that there was a substantial element of protest in the vote. However there was clearly an element of people who had voted for Fianna Fáil moving away from the party. The protest vote mainly went to independents and smaller parties like (People Before Profit Councillor) Joan Collins. The Labour Party profited mainly from the ‘political protest’ voters who had moved away from the government, rather than the protest voters who were voting in protest against the political establishment.

How much of your success do you attribute to the current popularity of your party?

Well let me say that I would attribute most of my success to twenty-five years of hard political slogging. I would attribute the increase in my vote to the popularity of the Labour Party, and indeed the popularity of our leader of Eamon Gilmore.

Let me give you an example. Five years ago I got twenty percent of the first preference vote in this constituency. This year I got twenty-five percent of the first preference vote. Together with my running mate Henry Upton, Labour got nearly fifty percent of the vote in the constituency. It’s the increase that I would attribute to the current popularity of the Labour Party.

What do you make of the thirty-year electoral pact (as it is referred to by The Irish Times) in the Dublin mayoral elections between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour? Although it gives Labour the chance to have mayors like the recently elected Emer Costello, does it not undermine the poltical independence of the party in Dublin City Council?

I think local government is very different to national government. You rely even more on the support of other parties. It is unheard of in DCC that any party would have an overall majority.

Therefore you need the support of other parties. There are fifty-two seats, so you would need twenty-seven to have a majority. Labour have nineteen councillors on DCC so we must look around and see who we can do business with. In our case we did business with everybody.

Although we were the best represented party on DCC this year (ahead of Fianna Gael with 16 seats), there was an agreement to distribute positions on DCC across all the parties. For example on the six strategic policy committees, there are three Labour representatives, one Fianna Fáil, one Fine Gael and one Sinn Fein.

All parties represented on DCC are represented with at least one official position, except the five independents. Majority rule in politics is the reality of democracy.

We need stability in this current economic climate, and by working together, Labour, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Fein and the independents are giving this stability to DCC.

How important a role do you think local politics can play in the coming years?

Well I’m twenty-four years on DCC, and I have to say the discussions Labour held with the other parties were some of the most fascinating I’ve ever taken part in because they all wanted to discuss policy.

There are now six Strategic Policy Committees, each has a manager who sits monthly on the Corporate Policy Committee. This is effectively the ‘cabinet’ of DCC, and they shape policy.

For the first time now you’ll see DCC run around policy issues as opposed to gimmicky local issues.

DCC is trying to spread the word that Dublin will be the engine of growth in this country. You hear Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael sort of downplay Dublin’s importance and go on about rural areas, but I believe that Dublin can and will be the engine of growth for Ireland in the next few years.

We’ll be trying to market Dublin as an ‘open city’ in the next few years. This will include working with the Gay community and other groups to make our city as vibrant as possible. This in turn will increase tourism and commerce.

You were one of the pioneers in terms of Irish politicians keeping blogs. Do you see online social networking playing a larger role in future elections?

Well one only has to look at what’s happening now out in Iran. Social Networking and blogging are playing a bigger role. It’s well known that the media and journalists are looking at blogs and social networks to get information from the source.

I’m bringing the local issues to the people by putting up blogs and photos on my website. My website has a section for each area of my constituency, so people can see directly the local issues I’ve been working on in their area. People are always trying to catch up with what I’m doing, and the website lets them.

There is a generational conflict now between the more traditional older politicians, who are struggling to adapt and use new social networking and blogging tools, and the new younger generation of politicians, who are very web-savvy.

Many thanks to Councillor Eric Byrne for his time and patience.