Advocates of pact portrayed as Thatcherite right wingers

SF CAMPAIGN LAUNCH:SINN FÉIN leader Gerry Adams has depicted supporters of the European fiscal compact treaty as Thatcherite and Reaganite right-wingers.

He said yesterday that the choice facing the Irish public in the referendum on May 31st was between austerity and growth.

Proponents of the treaty, he said, were coming from “a Thatcherite and Reaganite right-wing conservative ideological position”. The Louth deputy was speaking at the launch of the party’s campaign to urge a No vote on polling day. A pamphlet, Austerity isn’t working, was also launched by the party.

Speaking at the National Gallery, Mr Adams argued that if Ireland ratified the treaty, it would mean the handover of powers “to unelected officials and bureaucrats in the EU Commission”.

He said that providing a stimulus to create jobs was at the heart of Sinn Féin’s approach. “You cannot cut your way out of recession . . . There is no jobs stimulus in the Government’s strategy.”

He also dismissed as “rubbish” Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil arguments that Ireland will not be in a position to access emergency funding if the treaty is rejected.

He claimed that the emergency fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), needed to be given a legal basis in EU treaties.

In order to do that, all 27 member states had to ratify it. That is not due to be done until after the referendum. He suggested that Ireland could exercise its veto on the ESM. While a Sinn Féin strategist accepted it would be a difficult course of action to take, it was argued that there was “no way” the EU would deny emergency funding to a state.

Asked how the party proposed to find funding in the event of a No vote and a second bailout, he said it would come from “current sources”, a reference to the EU-ECB-IMF troika.

SINN FÉIN: PAMPHLET FINE GAEL REACTION

SINN FÉIN has been accused of “misquoting and misrepresenting impartial experts” in its leaflet advocating a No vote in the upcoming fiscal treaty referendum by Fine Gael TD Paschal Donohoe.

Economists Colm McCarthy and Karl Whelan are among those quoted in the Sinn Féin leaflet. Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams appeared before an Oireachtas committee yesterday to outline his opinion of the treaty.

Mr Donohoe produced a Sinn Féin leaflet in which he said economists who believed it was

in Ireland’s interests to pass the treaty had been quoted out of context. “You deliberately misquote them. You selectively represent them,” Mr Donohoe told Mr Adams.

“The reason that you are doing this is because there is a black hole in the centre of your argument. The black hole is you can’t answer how, in the context of a No vote, our hospitals and our schools would be funded,”

he said. “The only option you therefore have is as this leaflet demonstrates to misrepresent impartial experts.”

In the leaflet, Prof McCarthy is quoted as having said: “As an exercise in addressing the Eurozone’s twin banking and sovereign debt crises, the fiscal compact makes no worthwhile contribution.”

The quote is taken from an opinion article in the Irish Independent, in which Prof McCarthy went on to say: “If

there has to be a referendum, the electorate would be well-advised to swallow hard and vote yes, notwithstanding the inadequacies of the proposed treaty." - MARY MINIHAN