Maurice Hayes ■ Chairman of the National Forum on Europe

I am Maurice Hayes I am the chairman of the National Forum on Europe. The forum was established by the Government and political parties in 2001. Its mandate is to provide a neutral public space for discussion and issues relating to the European Union, and Ireland’s role within it. 

The members of the Forum are the political parties represented in the Oireachtas, Members of the European Parliament and 46 civil society organisations in the special observer pillar, and MEP’s and members elected from Northern Ireland are entitled to come to , and they do from time to time. 

We operate mainly through meetings, plenary meetings which are usually held in Dublin and a series of meetings around the country and this is one of a series that we’re having on the Treaty of Lisbon. The aim is to bring the debate around the country so that as many people as possible have the chance to listen, to ask questions and make their views known. It’s important that every person has the opportunity to do this before they vote in the referendum which I understand is due to be held on the 12^th of June. 

The new treaty is a lengthy and complex document, so there is a great need for a reliable and readable summary which would facilitate public debate. The Forum has produced a summary guide to the treaty which strives to be a factual guide and doesn’t make judgments. It wouldn’t be possible to cover every aspect of such a complex treaty so we seek to cover those which are important to Ireland and I am glad to that the Referendum Commission yesterday launched its own guide to the treaty. I haven’t seen it yet, but I look forward to that.  

There are other points of view of course which are represented in the Forum and we will ensure that they get a fair hearing during our debates. The objective is to get people to look closely at the treaty, to ask questions so that they understand the implications when they come to vote. Among others Sinn Féin has produced its own guide. This is available here this evening.  

We also have a website forumoneurope.ie where you can stay in touch with the debate over the coming weeks, and our meetings are available on pod cast through the site or through i-tunes, and this evening’s will be as well. The Forum’s website has a youtube channel for these public meetings, and if you would like to express your viewpoint on that channel it will only take a couple of minutes at the end of the meeting.

Before we hear from our speakers we are going to a short film on the treaty which the Forum has produced as an introduction to the debate. It shows the Forum at work and it touches on some of the key issues in the treaty debate, but makes no judgements and as I said before is not exhaustive. Other people and the speakers here will raise other issues, but it is an attempt simply to focus on the main questions that seem to be coming up.  After that each of the speakers will speak for about 15 minutes and then I’ll open the discussion to the floor. So if you’d take a look at the film for a moment and it will take 10 minutes.

FILM 
In December 2007 European leaders signed and important new treaty in Lisbon it followed a 2-year period of reflection in Europe after France and The Netherlands

Senator Déirdre de Búrca
Thanks very much.Good evening everybody. I’m very happy to be here in Portlaoise this evening discussing the Lisbon treaty. I know myself and Joe Higgins were on Midlands Radio earlier on today and a vox pop. was done of people who lived in the locality and it appeared that a lot of people felt they needed a lot more information about the treaty. So I hope tonight’s meeting will help to provide you with some of that information and a greater level of awareness about the treaty.  

I better start by saying that although I’m a Green Party Senator I’m not speaking or presenting the Green Party’s position here tonight and the reason why I’m not is because the Green Party earlier this year in January consulted its membership about what position party members -the grassroots members- wished us to take in relation to the Lisbon treaty. Now having taken a vote on it 63 percent of our party members voted in favour of supporting the Lisbon treaty. After one, of what I would consider the best debates we’ve had in the party where both the ‘no’ and the ‘yes’ arguments were trashed out fully. And 37 percent of our membership voted against supporting the treaty but because under our constitution two-thirds of our membership would have to support any change in the party’s position and so we were left in a position where we had no official campaigning position, but it was left to individuals to campaign as they saw fit and so you will see members of the Green Party some of them campaigning for the treaty and some of them against the treaty. I am here tonight to speak in favour of the treaty and I hope I’ll be able to explain to you why that is. 

Filed under:
European Affairs, National Forum on Europe by Deirdre