McDowell urges Yes vote as return to politics rumoured
But the former Progressive Democrats leader would not comment on rumours he had been in talks with Fine Gael about the possibility of contesting a seat for the party in the next general election.
Mr McDowell strongly endorsed the treaty at a launch of the Solicitors for Lisbon group yesterday, in what was his first significant public involvement in politics since he lost his seat in the 2007 general election.
Afterwards, he declined to rule out the possibility of re- entering politics or deny speculation of talks with Fine Gael: “I’m not talking about my future, I came here in a personal capacity to talk about Europe.”
He ruled himself out of the job of Ireland’s European Commissioner when Charlie McCreevy’s term ends next month, and appealed for “a real debate about Europe, not a debate about other issues”.
Mr McDowell criticised the “Punch and Judy” style debate about European issues in Ireland: “We can’t allow a situation where the debate is dominated by people whose views represent a tiny minority on one side or another. We must have a debate where the centre ground is what counts.”
He said he was “absolutely not” implicitly criticising the Government for having messed up the debate on Lisbon: “In appealing for a non-soundbite type of debate, I don’t think I’m criticising anybody. I think the Government has to live in the real world, the same way as the rest of do and it is difficult to get across on a sustained basis nuanced and complex arguments.”
Mr McDowell argued the Lisbon Treaty does not create an EU state or an unstoppable slide into such a state, based on his legal analysis of judgments from the Czech and German constitutional courts on the issue of member state sovereignty.
“Taking into account the guarantees the Irish Government have obtained from Europe, the change in relation to the commissioner, and taking into account our very strong economic interests, particularly at this time, and taking into account what I think is a compelling case that this is not the imposition of something that spells the end for Irish sovereignty, that there is a very strong reason for voting Yes for it,” he said.
