Not possible to accede to all citizen petitions

IN his letter headlined ‘Disinformation, omission and the politics of fear’ (May 2), Cllr Kieran McCarthy says my letter (‘Media should veto statements designed to spread disinformation,’ April 28) contains inaccuracies.

However, he fails to point out any such inaccuracies. The only claim he made was that I should have mentioned that a new citizens’ initiative petition will force the European Commission to consider submissions (which is a significant new development in itself), though not necessarily to ratify them.

There is no way the commission could responsibly accede to all petitions just because they had enough signatures to be considered.

What the commission will do, however, is consider the arguments made in a petition, and its viability. For example, there could be a petition signed by citizens for the introduction of an EU coastguard.

Cllr McCarthy is stretching credulity to claim I am therefore spreading disinformation. He is Sinn Féin a town councillor. His party has been stretching the truth in their Lisbon Treaty campaign and promoting the “fear factor” politics that I referred to.

It is laughable that SF claims corporation tax here could be increased by the treaty.

And it’s also ironic because, until fairly recently, SF favoured a corporation tax rate in Ireland as high as 30% for financial institutions.

SF is now claiming to be pro-European, but it has campaigned against all EU treaties to date.

John Kennedy

Knocknashee

Goatstown

Dublin 14