SF: Ireland will lose power

SINN FÉIN made a last ditch attempt to warn voters against supporting the Lisbon Treaty yesterday insisting it had been negotiated by an “incompetent government”.

Pounding the streets of Dublin city centre with officials, party leader Gerry Adams claimed to shoppers and passers-by that Ireland would lose its power once it was handed over to Brussels if the treaty was ratified.

The lead up to polling day tomorrow has seen the Yes and No sides in bitter exchanges with accusations of bullying by Mr Adams’s party. Labour this week said the party was resorting to a tactic of “shouting people down” on the streets as it was losing its argument.

A Yes vote is being supported by all the opposition parties with the exception of Sinn Féin. But Sinn Féin broke ranks with other parties yesterday saying voters should use the referendum as a way of expressing their dissatisfaction with the Government. “If you want change, at home and across Europe then vote No. If you want a fairer, more democratic, more social, more peaceful Ireland and Europe then vote No. If you want an end to this political establishment and their developer, banker and big business friends then vote No,” said Mr Adams in a statement. Mr Adams was briefly campaigning alongside party colleagues Mary Lou McDonald and Aengus O’Snodaigh outside the GPO on O’Connell Street.

“This is a bad treaty negotiated by an incompetent government and I am calling on people to... reject it on Friday,” he said. Mr Adams says “not one comma” has been changed in the Lisbon Treaty for the second poll.

“If Lisbon goes through the Irish electorate will be handing decisions about Ireland’s future over to an EU elite and once you hand that power away it is next to impossible to get it back.”