McCreevy makes strong appeal for ratification

YES CAMPAIGN:EU COMMISSIONER Charlie McCreevy has made a strong appeal for a Yes vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum, warning that a rejection would be a "gamble too far".

He said “as someone who has never been misty-eyed about Brussels” but who “cares greatly about this country and its economic future, I urge people to face up to the potential damage that a No vote on October 2nd would do”.

Addressing a lunch in Dublin, Mr McCreevy said it didn’t take a “clairvoyant to imagine how a second No vote would be presented by those competing with us for foreign direct investment and jobs”.

Speaking to an audience that included EU ambassadors and business people, he said “my scepticism about certain aspects of the EU is no secret. But on this occasion, a No vote would be a major gamble. As you know I am someone who has never been afraid to gamble politically or otherwise. But I must say that in these fragile economic circumstances gambling on the consequences of a No vote would for me be a gamble too far.”

He urged voters, “however alienated and angry” they feel with the Government, bankers or the entire system “not to tighten the noose around our own country’s neck by conveying the wrong signal to international decision makers who look to Ireland as a place for possible future investment”.

At the lunch in the Conrad hotel for Eversheds O’Donnell Sweeney law firm, Mr McCreevy acknowledged that “those who say the Lisbon Treaty will make little, or only a small, different to our membership of the EU may be right. At least it is a debatable point.

“But in my view they are missing the real point. Among international investors, who we need to get us through our difficult economic patch – perception – if it isn’t all it can be nearly all.”

He said “for the past few years some very influential parts of the international financial press have taken every opportunity that was presented to them to do this country down.

“Be in no doubt – they will use a No vote on October 2nd to stir up speculation about this country being forced out – or being forced to the margins of the European Union and use this to highlight the risks for international investment in Ireland”.

International confidence in Ireland “has never been so fragile” and “we simply cannot afford doubts or more negative perceptions to take hold or indeed to be reinforced”, he said, adding that after the last referendum he was asked by a Japanese businessmen if Ireland was leaving the EU.

Anyone disputing Ireland’s fragility should look at the market for Irish Government bonds, where bond yields had risen to more elevated levels than for any other government in the euro zone, he said.

The higher cost to Ireland now of raising debt compared to any other euro zone members reflected perceptions rather than underlying economic realities because Ireland’s fundamentals were still stronger than those of several of those other members.

McCreevy remarks: colourful commissioner on treaty

IT WAS an inevitable question for the man who famously said no “sane and sensible person” would read the Lisbon Treaty.

When asked yesterday had he read the treaty this time around, Mr McCreevy quipped: “I stay up nightly, I didn’t go to bed at all for the last six months, reading the Lisbon Treaty as I know everybody in the country is so doing . . . Noeleen my wife has said to me repeatedly on occasions ‘would you ever leave down that Lisbon Treaty and go and make me a cup of tea’.

My wife is very upset with me because I haven’t spoken to her for months because I’ve been in bed, reading this treaty all night.”

Asked his view of the use in No posters of a comment by him that 95 per cent of other EU countries would have voted No in a referendum on the treaty, Mr McCreevy said: “I remember making that particular comment, which I have done on more than one occasion.

“It was in the context that the political leaders of Europe were all glad themselves that they didn’t have to put the question to their peoples by way of referendum.”

Questioned about how he would be remembered by his commission colleagues, he answered. “The same way I’m remembered here – with love and affection.”

Asked what he planned to do after his term as a commissioner ends, he said: “I’m going to become a journalist.”