A chara, - There have been some recent suggestions that the Supreme Court judgement in the McKenna case is preventing the Government from mounting an information campaign on the referendum on the Amsterdam Treaty. These are grossly misleading.
That judgement does not prevent the spreading of information on a referendum by the Government; it merely prohibits the use of public money to distribute partisan information for one side in the campaign. In his ruling Chief Justice Hamilton said that the Government "had not held the scales equally" between the two sides during the divorce referendum. However, the Supreme Court recognised that the Government had a duty to provide factual and objective information outlining the pros and cons of a referendum proposal.
The Government failed to do this in the referenda on Maastricht and the Single European Act. Token efforts to provide objective information were made during the more recent referendums on bail and Cabinet confidentiality. But the low polls showed these to be inadequate and ineffective.
To claim that the McKenna judgement is somehow responsible for keeping people in the dark about the consequences of ratifying the Amsterdam Treaty is simply perverse. The ruling upheld the right of the public to be informed in an impartial manner without the abuse of taxpayers' money to achieve the political ends of those in power.
The ban on Governments funding political campaigns at taxpayers' expense is an important element of the democratic nature of the state, a point that has also been recognised by the German Constitutional Court.
It would seem that the Government, prevented from circulating biased information, would prefer to distribute no information rather than give a balanced account of the pros and cons of the Amsterdam Treaty. It would be disingenuous of the Government or political commentators to twist the McKenna judgement to conceal an abject failure to inform the Irish people about this vital issue. - Is mise,
European Parliament Offices, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2.