Sunday, June 21, 2009 By Niamh Connolly, Political Correspondent The government has cleared the first hurdle to holding a second Lisbon Treaty referendum by securing legal guarantees and a protocol for Ireland to address voters’ concerns.However, its diplomatic success in Brussels must now be followed up with work on the ground to ensure that those voters who have a No stance will support the treaty if and when there is another vote.Recent RedC/Sunday Business Post opinion polls show a shift in voters by a margin of about two to one in support of the treaty in a second referendum.This is good news for a government still reeling from the local and European election backlash. But in such a volatile electoral climate, Taoiseach Brian Cowen can leave little to chance if he wants to avoid another humiliation in the autumn.
It’s worth bearing in mind that early polls before the last referendum also showed a majority in support of the treaty. But this lead was rapidly eroded by the Nos once the anti-Lisbon campaigns got under way.Given Fianna Fáil’s routing in the local and European elections, the fear on the Yes side is that voters will be tempted to deliver another crushing blow to the government ahead of the budget. The last Yes campaign was marked by political sniping and discord between Cowen and Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny about which party was doing the most campaign work on the ground.The combined forces of the No side, including the campaign by Libertas’ founder Declan Ganley and pro-life group Coir, proved too much to handle for a Yes side that was essentially divided.With Ganley pledging to bow out after his European election defeat, the major No voices now marshalling include new European MEP Joe Higgins, People Before Profit, Coir, Peace and Neutrality Alliance, Sinn Féin and the People’s Movement, which is headed by former Green Party MEP Patricia McKenna.The belief in Leinster House is that this time around, partisan politics must be set aside in the interests of a cohesive campaign under a Yes banner.However, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny showed little inclination to test the theory of bipartisan politics last week when he returned to the source of the conflict between the parties in the last referendum debate.‘‘The timing of the last referendum left a lot to be desired when you had one taoiseach leaving and another one arriving. The government took their eye off the ball . . . the campaign was not co-ordinated,” said Kenny.Emboldened by his meeting with the European Commission president Jose¤ Manuel Barroso, Kenny announced he would lead the Yes campaign rather than risk the treaty falling foul of anti-government sentiment.This weekend, nobody on the government side has publicly taken issue with Kenny’s claim to lead the Yes campaign. Indeed, there was exaggerated relief expressed by some Fianna Fáil TDs that Kenny would ensure his party engaged more actively this time around.A Millward Brown report showed that 52 per cent of Fine Gael supporters voted in favour of the treaty, while the rate for Fianna Fáil supporters was 63 per cent.Some 61 per cent of Labour Party supporters voted against the treaty, as did 53 per cent of Green Party voters, and a massive 88 per cent of Sinn Fin supporters.Some sections of the Fine Gael party and its support base, including the larger farmers in the IFA, failed to actively support the Yes side.Even inside the parliamentary party, certain Fine Gael TDs privately saw the treaty last time ‘‘as an opportunity to give the government a kicking’’, one source said.‘‘They’ve had their pound of flesh now, so they can afford to take the statesman-like approach,” they said.But Kenny has also pointed out the dangers of the government leading a referendum campaign - namely its record unpopularity.‘‘There may be a political problem in separating the Lisbon referendum from the government’s mismanagement of the economy . . . The people want an election,” he warned last week.The extent of the public’s anger at the government may pose the biggest threat to the treaty being passed the second time around.This hostility is only likely to grow ahead of a difficult budget in December. Kenny has urged the government to set a date for the referendum early and move the referendum legislation in July, rather than attempt to recall the Dáil in September.Crucially, if Cowen is to attempt to get the public on board, he must try to put as much distance as possible between the referendum and the budget to come in December.Over the summer months, there will be rising concern about public sector cutbacks with An Bord Snip and the Commission on Taxation due to report back to government.In September, contentious legislation will be published to set up bad banks agency National Asset Management Agency (Nama), with the support of taxpayers’ billions of euros - an issue that may not help positive public opinion when it comes to the treaty.‘‘The government is already exceptionally unpopular, but in the national interest it will be incumbent on Fine Gael and Labour to set aside traditional differences with the government in the run-up to the campaign,” said Fine Gael senator Paschal Donohoe.Donohoe was appointed to chair a special sub-committee on Ireland’s future in Europe, set up by Cowen last autumn, to consider the reasons why the electorate voted No to the treaty last summer. ‘‘We have to approach this from the position that it is the current will of the people to say ‘No’. There has to be an insurgency campaign waged to convince people that the decision should be overturned,” Donohoe said.Yes campaign, Kenny was ‘‘opening up dialogue’’ within Fine Gael to get its support base on board with the treaty.Donohoe had little doubt that Cowen’s public comments questioning Fine Gael’s commitment in the last referendum had dissuaded Fine Gael voters from coming out on the Yes side.Cowen, during the campaign, remarked that an opinion poll showed Fianna Fáil was ‘‘the most pro-European party’’ and that support for the treaty was highest amongst Fianna Fáil voters.He encouraged other parties to ‘‘crank up their campaigns now as well’’.‘‘If you’re Enda Kenny trying to encourage Fine Gael voters to come out and vote for the treaty, and you have Brian Cowen saying we’re not doing enough . . . I’m certain it did dissuade Fine Gael people from coming out,” said Donohoe.” I would hope that lesson has been learned, because if it hasn’t, we’re in grave difficulty.It’s clear to me that the comments made during that campaign failed to incentivise the participants to do the best for their own parties,” he added.This time, Cowen will have to adopt more diplomatic tactics if he’s to get all the parties facing one direction. Latent anti-immigrant bias, linked to concerns over the displacement of Irish workers, also played a role in the treaty’s No result.A series of building blocks will also have to be put in place before the voters go to the polls for a second time on Lisbon, according to the Labour Party’s Joe Costello.Costello, who is Labour’s spokesman for European Affairs, said the government needs to take immediate action to deal with the 40 per cent of voters who expressed concern about workers’ rights in the Millward Brown Report.Three separate pieces of employment legislation need to go through the Oireachtas to address employee rights and concerns raised by the trade union movement before voters go to the polls again, he said.The Employment Law Compliance Bill must be passed to establish the National Employment Rights Authority (Nera) as a statutory body. The bill, which is to go the Seanad, will also strengthen the powers of Nera labour inspectors.The Agency Workers Directive, agreed by the European Commission last November, must be transposed into Irish law, Costello said. A crunch issue here is the collective bargaining rights. This directive met initial resistance from several member states, including Britain, Ireland and Poland.‘‘This directive was agreed last November and needs to be before the Oireachtas before October, he said. ‘‘Poland pulled back from opposing it, and Britain has also changed its mind, so that left us isolated.”‘‘We raised this with the Taoiseach last week, and he has agreed to ‘frontload’ that legislation,” he said.The final piece of the legislative jigsaw to appease trade unions’ concerns is to ring fence domestic legislation on workers’ rights to avoid any complications arising with the EU Directive on Posted Workers.The Directive on Posted Workers aims to guarantee minimum employment standards and protection for employees who are posted cross border within the European Union.However, in Sweden, a Latvian company, Laval, sparked major controversy by refusing to sign a Swedish industrial agreement for the construction work being undertaken in the country. ‘‘Sweden thought they had the best protections for workers, but they found themselves in difficulty on the Laval case because they were not operating from a statutory basis, but from an agreement between workers and employers,” said Costello.The Laval case was raised frequently by Siptu and Unite in the last referendum to justify its problems with the treaty. ‘‘We transposed this into Irish law in 2001, but only in a limited fashion,” said Costello.‘‘The only way to resolve this properly is to ensure that the legislation passed in each country is watertight,” he warned.There are concerns in the European trade union movement that the ‘solemn declaration’ on workers’ rights does not go far enough. European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) general secretary John Monks has outlined the same concerns he expressed last year, on legal judgments from the European Court of Justice.He said that individual Polish workers in Ireland are entitled to equal pay for equal work compared to Irish workers, but if they are posted to Ireland by an employer, the same protections do not necessarily apply.Nonetheless, the ETUC appears to be adopting a similar position to the first Lisbon Treaty, which is to broadly support the treaty while campaigning for social protocol to be attached on workers’ rights.Meanwhile, the trade unions in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Itch) will be formally discussing the implications of the ‘solemn declaration’ secured by the Taoiseach at a meeting with the ETUC general secretary in Dublin next month.
