What do you think is the best course of action for Ireland to take now?

where is option D and E

after all the French and Dutch didn't pick A, B or C in that poll after their peoples voted No :pac:

Duffman wrote: »

LOL. You're concerned about the effect of the strength of the Euro on the Irish economy? It fell to a three-year low immediately, as a direct consequence of the referendum result. Result!

Oh come on now. I was speaking about events before the referendum, as I am sure you have realised.

ruskin wrote: »

Ireland voted no. Full stop. Surely even those of you who voted yes believe that this is a democracy and that the voice of the people should be respected? Zarcozy and Barosso's attitudes really show the complete arrogance and downright stubborn attitude of Europe, in that from their point of view its full steam ahead with Lisbon. The fact of the matter is, that Ireland voted no, and thus the Lisbon Treaty is dead. I now hope other member states who have not ratified the treaty begin to say that their is no point in ratifying the treaty given Ireland's no vote. We are already hearing this from the Czech president. If all the 26 other states voted for Lisbon, then I really think EU leaders would put pressure on us to vote again. However, I realistically think other countries will scrap Lisbon in the coming months.

Hopefully yes. I am a firm supporter of Europe as a common market and an alliance between like thinking independant states. I am not a supporter of a federal state dominated by politicians and bureaucrats who do not consider the voice of the people worth listening to.

Duffman wrote: »

Switzerland has agreements with the EU that allow free access to the single market. So as far as these companies are concerned then yes, they might as well be in the EU. Also, examples?

Switzerland and a few others are members of EFTA. If we as a people cannot accept the EU Federal State, perhaps that is where we should be?

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

Fish stocks are livestock, they replenish themselves, assuming you don't overfish them, which is fairly easy to manage.

Yes switching from producing high technology,eg PCs, processors, medicines, financial services, to fishing is really going to improve our economy? We would simply be priced out of the market by fihers in SE Asia

Mairt wrote: »

I didn't vote (in this poll), until you posted this, then I did

And what did you vote and why?

The treaty is now legally dead, it had to be ratified by all member states and it has failed in doing so. Find it odd that the EU leaders say theyre going to press ahead with it despite knowing it cant be passed now, and more odd that the Euro-philes in Ireland want to give more power and control over to these people who obviously dont give a ****e about our opinion

ART6 wrote: »

Switzerland and a few others are members of EFTA. If we as a people cannot accept the EU Federal State, perhaps that is where we should be?

People voted no to Lisbon (where they didn't vote no out of fear) because they want to maintain decision-making power at parliamentary and council level and, apparently, want us to have more executive power than any other EU state. In what world does stepping back into the EFTA tally with that motive? We get trade links with zero executive or decision-making power. Super.

DonJose wrote: »

If those 500 million people were allowed a voice/vote the majority would vote the same way as the Irish.

Do you have an actual source on that or is it speculation? More to the point do you have a source based on a sample set who have even a vague idea of the content of the treaty? I suspect if you just poll them on short notice the figures aren't worth much.

DonJose wrote: »

The Dutch rejected the EU constitution in June 2005, 61.6% of people voted "No" and only 38.4% voted "Yes". The French also rejected the EU constitution in May 2005, 55% of people voted "No", 45% voted "Yes".

The rejection cannot be looked upon as a rejection of 100% of the Constitution document. Nor can it be seen as a rejection of any part of Lisbon since the area of contention, in the absence of good data, could easily have been the 5% difference between the two. People are asked to read 260 pages of legal language and respond with "yes" or "no". So more information is needed... The polls suggested that amongst the primary issues to do with the Constitution were the use of the word "constitution" and the adoption of an unpopular EU national anthem.

And so, almost as if operating under democracy (shock), the opinions of the people were addressed. Compromise was reached, a compromise which included input from Ireland. Input dictated by people we elected democratically. Lisbon was not put to the people of France and Holland. But it would be far too easy to simply assume that this was an effort to silence the people. The governments of France and Holland were not obliged to put this to referendum this time and so they didn't. Isn't it quite likely that, given a choice, a government won't choose to spend millions of euros, months of campaigning, forcing upon the people a document designed to be understood by lawyers?

Isn't it fair to say that when a country elects into power a strongly pro-European government, that they should fully expect such a government to ratify pro-European treaties on their behalf? An analogy: If I really think that my doctor is not doing a good job of treating my heart condition, do I say sod it and take matters into my own hands, drugs, surgery and all? Or do I get a new doctor? Governments are our employees, they are specialists. They are doing a job for us, which in most nations includes making sense of stuff like Lisbon on our behalf. If they screw it up (and of course sometimes they do), we can fire them. In Ireland we almost never do.

if there's a Lisbon 2 i think yes will win because everyone's afraid we're going to be kicked out of the EU now

eoin2nc wrote: »

Yes switching from producing high technology,eg PCs, processors, medicines, financial services, to fishing is really going to improve our economy? We would simply be priced out of the market by fihers in SE Asia

No-one was saying that we should reclaim our fisheries or should have retained them instead of going down the high tech path you mention. I suggest that the point that was being made was mainly that while we got a lot out of Europe, Europe got a fair bit out of us. No-one said forget all the other crap and let's all become fishermen.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

I think its fair to say that most politicians would see the EU as an enhanced career path for them, regardless of the wishes of their electorates, bringing with it more money and power. As such it is unreasonable to expect them to act in any way which might threaten that career growth.

Which, within a democracy, suggests a logical course of action. Vote them out. That ought to make their career path take a turn. People cry a lot about democracy without ever really taking it into their hands. In Ireland in particular, the default vote seems to be "change nothing, I'm scared". This is then followed by people complaining that nothing changed.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

A lot of the concern people have is the overlaying of enormous layers of beaurocracy on top of our already gigantic beaurocratic machine here in Ireland, levying taxes to pay for its existence, and laws which have little to do with how things are on the ground here.

Yet we see a gradual move towards the EU having more and more on-the-ground relevance. A move towards slimming of the institutions and reduction of the layers that lie between the local voter and Brussels. That seems to really be what people are afraid of, since it suggests inevitably that Ireland will lose it's sovereign government. Strange that we are afraid to lose something that we are increasingly dissatisfied with, but that feeds back into my point about change.

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

The problem with democracy isn't that people are given a voice, its that the people attracted to that power are not the sorts you want in charge of anything.

Well now that is neither an argument regarding Lisbon or the EU. For what it's worth, I agree- it's an idealistic system applied to flawed humans. Aren't they all?

AtomicHorror wrote: »

We elected people to do this job for us, to make the call. We ignored the people we put in charge. The difference between other European nations and us is that we sometimes get the pleasure of direct voting on international treaties and legislation, a job that the average person is not only ill-qualified to do, but which is a gross waste of time, money and resources.
.

What a terrible opinion we did not elect the government to change the constitution we elected them to govern under the powers granted by the constitution, and the people are the perfect choice to decide on this matter.
If you think the TD's in the dail read half of the stuff they vote on your misguided and this would have been passed by the dail not because it was good for the country but because party whips would tell their party members what to do and so they wouldn't need to read the treaty.

The people shouldn't have a say in running their country, is that your opinion? :eek::eek::eek: