Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-21-Speech-1-100-000"
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"en.20120521.16.1-100-000"2
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"Mr President, the Fiscal Stability Treaty will be put to the vote in Ireland in a referendum on 31 May, but I want to take this opportunity to denounce the undemocratic nature of the debate.
There is a severe distortion of the democratic process following the McKenna judgment, which stipulates that the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ sides of any referendum campaign must be given equal weight in terms of air time during the campaign. This creates a perverse incentive for all sorts of shady interests to campaign against any referendum, often on spurious grounds. Added to this is the absurdly undemocratic nature of allowing vested interests with no democratic mandate – such as Declan Ganley, a failed European Parliament candidate in 2009 – a disproportionate platform on the national airwaves.
Tonight, Mr Ganley will be given a similar platform, along with the Deputy Prime Minister
Eamon Gilmore, on the popular current affairs programme, ‘The Frontline’. Mr Ganley, alongside the Russian economist, Konstantin Gurdgiev, has set up an asset management company in Switzerland called St Columbanus AG. This company would clearly stand to benefit from any financial instability in Ireland caused by a ‘no’ vote. As it states on its own website: ‘The firm provides a safe haven for assets in the midst of the continuing global financial crisis, a service that appears increasingly important in the current European context of fragile peripheral economies, and an unstable eurozone banking sector’.
I think giving this platform to Mr Ganley is totally undemocratic, particularly when you consider that 11 of the 12 Irish MEPs who are in favour of the referendum are virtually ignored."@en1
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"an Tánaiste"1
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