There was a really brave article today from Jamie Smyth in the Irish Times. Brave, because it flies in the face of the entire PC ethos the Times has cornered in the Irish media market.
In his piece, snappily headlined: ‘How do we close information gap between Dublin and Brussels?’ Smyth totally put his finger on the dilemma facing the citizens of the EU and especially Irish voters on the Lisbon Treaty.
In outlining why it is becoming so difficult to keep up with the avalanche of new laws and regulations coming out of Brussels, Smyth referred to the decision last week of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the Metock immigration case. This concerns four couples – two non-Irish EU nationals married to two non-EU nationals who had claimed asylum in Ireland.
These plaintiffs had successfully challenged deportation orders issued by the Irish authorities when they appealed the case to the ECJ, which ruled in 2006 that the Irish Government had broken EU law by restricting the “right” of non-EU spouses to live in Ireland. Despite our government insisting that this was a fundamental blow to our immigration policies, especially in the area of sham marriages, the Department of Justice was forced to halt the deportation of 1,500 asylum seekers.
In the meantime, Ireland was joined by an alarmed Denmark in appealing to its European partners to amend the freedom of movement directive to stop this loophole being exploited. Last week the ECJ finally turned them down, forcing the Government to change a key element of its immigration policy.
Smyth’s most telling point in the article is that, despite the importance of the case, not a word was written in the Irish newspapers about the decision and no Irish radio or TV station mentioned the climbdown by Ireland and Denmark. Neither did Dermot Ahern, the Minister for Justice, issue a press release about it, nor did any opposition politician feel it worthy of any comment.
As Jamie Smyth so rightly says: ‘Clearly, the public cannot rely on Ministers to bring to their attention decisions in Brussels that have not met Irish concerns… Most of the sensitive discussions at the council, including the debate on Metock, are held in private session, making it very difficult for the public or even journalists to find out what has happened.’
Smyth and the Irish Times are to be congratulated for divining one of the most frightening aspects of the present EU and the role it is playing, in close collaboration with our political class, in imposing the will of a small group of judges upon this country, whether it is in our interest or not. No doubt Brian Cowen, Enda Kenny, and Eamon Gilmore are still convinced we rejected Lisbon 1 because we didn’t understand it. Do they?
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