The publishers of the Catholic monthly newspaper, who ran an advert claiming the treaty could lead to the detention of children of mild alcoholics, have been labelled as an Irish version of the Taliban.
Green Party senator Deirdre de Burca said today the Alivenewspaper was "peddling gross mistruths" about the Lisbon Treaty and was preying on the most vulnerable in society.
Addressing the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs today, Ms de Burca said: "It is important that the fundamentalist and extremist views of those writing for the Alivenewspaper should not be allowed to win the debate on the Lisbon Treaty".
“I believe that the people who produce this newspaper are the equivalent of an Irish Taliban,” she said.
The advert, which was placed by the anti-Lisbon group Éire go Brách, alleges that under the treaty “the EU could seize elderly people’s savings and homes and can take children off people who suffer from mild forms of alcoholism or depression, or who do not own a family home”.
It also quotes a paragraph that it claims is contained in Article 6 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights – a new rights charter that will be made legally binding if the treaty is ratified. In fact, Article 6 of the charter simply states that “everyone has the right to liberty and security”.
Éire go Brách is a Cork-based group opposing the treaty. The group’s campaign director Máire de Faoite said the paragraph quoted in the advert in Alive was contained in an explanatory note on the charter, which was contained in a consolidated version of the EU treaties. She denied the group was scaremongering by selectively reading different EU texts to spread irrational fears that would confuse the public.
The group’s website claims the treaty would make Ireland a subject province of an EU empire, force abortion on Ireland and create an EU immigration plantation that would destroy Irish identity.