RTE: Nation to Be Spared From Promissory Note Deal

RTE’s Nine O’Clock news are reporting Enda Kenny as explaining that promissory note negotiations are totally separate from the question of will the Irish people vote for the Fiscal Compact Treaty and that the Irish people will not bribed to vote for the Treaty.

RTE also noted that the latest Council meeting was “dominated by jobs and growth” which sounds like great news. And, best of all, reporter Tony Connelly helpfully explained that it was now felt that asking for a better deal on promissory notes was actually a bad idea because it would send a bad signal to financial markets that we were not able to cope with our debt burden and that there was no way this issue would be dealt with any time before the summer.

Ok, so be it. But I suspect that “the Irish people won’t be bribed” may prove to be the worst referendum slogan in history.

Treaty Agreement: January 30

Information on the Treaty agreed last night by 25 EU member states is available here. Somewhat remarkably, given that draft texts have been circulating for weeks, there is no version of the agreed text.  Anyone out there have a link?

I’d note that the materials released all point to the need to implement the structural deficit rule at “constitutional or equivalent level” while the Independent reports that “preferably constitutional” is in the final draft.

If indeed it turns out that we need a referendum, this is a pretty bad start.

Update: The EU Council have finally released the text here. Anyway, “preferably constitutional” has been retained, which begs the question as to what van Rompuy and his officials were up to with their statements about “constitutional or equivalent level”.

The fiscal compact and referendum mechanisms in Ireland

The Minister for Transport, Mr Varadkar, in commenting on whether a referendum will be necessary for Ireland to sign up to the fiscal compact is reported to have made the commonplace point that

There’s only one reason why you have a referendum and that’s where there is a requirement to change the constitution.

Em, not quite.

Apart from a political view that a referendum might be desirable in any event, there is a particular mechanism in the Constitution of Ireland for holding a referendum, even when a measure does not require constitutional amendment. This is set out in Articles 27 and 47, whereby one-third of the Dáil and a majority of the Seanad could petition the President to decline to sign and promulgate a Bill “on the ground that the Bill contains a proposal of such national importance that the will of the people thereon ought to be ascertained.”

The detailed provisions of Article 27 envisage that if such a petition were successful, the will of the people could be ascertained either by referendum (in which at least one-third of those on the register would have to vote “no” in order to veto, by virtue of Article 47) or, in effect, by a general election.

I guess the fiscal compact itself may not in fact be a Bill, but presumably the detailed fiscal provisions of the agreement will have at least that legal form. Apart from whether the required numbers of TDs and Senators would line-up for the petition which Article 27 envisages, whether or not this mechanism will be applicable seems to me, as a non-lawyer, to turn on whether the Bill in question is a “Money Bill”. Money Bills appear to me to exempt from Article 27 (reading back to Articles 23 and 22) but I may be mis-reading that, so perhaps we might get some legally informed views in comments.

New Fiscal Compact Draft

Via the IIEA blog, a new leaked draft of the proposed fiscal compact. Importantly for Ireland, the wording that balanced budget laws need to be “constitutional or equivalent” has been replaced with “preferably constitutional”.

Draft Treaty

A draft of the proposed Treaty has been released. I think we should be very very slow to look to put this to a referendum, if such is required (and it probably is).  Many things may happen in the meantime that could derail this particular process.

In the meantime, our leaders should stop making up exciting scenarios involving Ireland leaving the euro if a treaty is rejected. That Stephen Collins vehemently disagrees with this only strengthens my conviction on this point.