LIVE RADIO DEBATE:JOBS AND the minimum wage were the arguments, and insults the favoured means of transmission, as Yes and No campaigners squared up against each other in one of the last big debates of the campaign.
Mutual accusations of lying peppered yesterday's debate, conducted live for RTÉ Radio's Today With Pat Kennyprogramme in the window of the Arnotts store on Dublin's Henry Street.
For Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin, the biggest lie in the No campaign was the claim that the minimum wage would fall if voters approved the treaty. He attacked the “extraordinary duplicity” of Sinn Féin which, he claimed, affected to be pro-Europe but anti-Lisbon. “It’s a con job,” he said to applause.
For Libertas, Declan Ganley said the core argument of the pro-Lisbon lobby, that a Yes vote would mean more jobs, was false.
Former EU Parliament president Pat Cox had earlier accused “Braveheart” Ganley of “calculated and measured misrepresentation and manufactured arguments”. The essential context of the debate was that Ireland’s involvement with the EU had resulted in a doubling of the numbers at work and a 60-fold increase in exports, and Europe, “the place where we earn our bread and butter”, had been the source of foreign direct investment.
“You typify the arrogance of the Brussels elite, you are a shining example of everything that is wrong,” Ganley responded.
“Don’t play the man,” Cox interjected, but Ganley came back: “You called me Braveheart.”
“You called yourself Braveheart. Check it on the internet,” said Cox.
Fine Gael MEP Mairéad McGuinness wondered whether undecided voters shouldn’t switch off and go for a walk to think about the treaty rather than listen to entrenched views, but before long she too was trading punches with Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald. Neither McDonald nor Ganley was elected last time out, she reminded them, so they should respect the democratic decision of the voters.
For a time, Ganley’s microphone was malfunctioning, so he couldn’t be heard by the crowd outside the window. When the street-sweeping machine stopped, its engine still running, it was too much for his supporters, who claimed their man was being gagged.
The Minister was in fighting form, mocking Socialist Party MEP Joe Higgins’s “outmoded, outdated ideology”, which would do nothing for job creation. When Mary Lou told him to stop shouting at her, he said he wasn’t shouting: “I’m just making a very assertive point.”
Higgins was in “monstrous” mood – Stalin’s bureaucracy in eastern Europe which he had stood against was “monstrous”, it was a “monstrous” lie for the Government to claim that a Yes vote would transform the jobs scene, it was “monstrous” to claim there would be a flight of capital if we vote No, etc.
Joe thundered on about militarism but was silenced momentarily when Pat Kenny asked him where the Irish Army was to buy its guns.
When Cox accused him of “lefty codswallop” it all got too much for Mairéad McGuinness who said there was “far too much testosterone banging around the table”. Mary Lou nodded in agreement.
