Honest answer is to change the constitution

SO the Government’s pigeons have all come home to roost and the coop, it seems, is in disarray.

Long faces and the usual guff about “respecting the will of the people” are the order of the day as if they can’t believe the gall of these ingrates in not just, once again, compliantly acquiescing and passing a document a great many people got little clear, impartial information about.

Through their own complacency, arrogance and unwillingness to learn from past mistakes, they have found themselves in this mess and a similar situation to the fallout from the first, failed Nice Treaty in 2001.

If they have the temerity to do what they did then and hold another referendum and, as in that case, the people change their minds, then I will throw my hat at any notion of democracy here.

Leaving aside how they get around their current difficulty, it’s abundantly obvious that the only honest and honourable way to circumvent this type of situation is for a constitutional amendment to be put before the people. I’m pretty confident the majority would be quite prepared to accede to this simple change. Then the Government can ratify such treaties by itself, like the majority of our neighbours, and won’t be witnessed sulking like a group of overgrown schoolchildren, insulting the population with their barely concealed disdain for what was an all too predictable outcome and finding themselves red-faced in front of their European counterparts.

David Marlborough

103 Kenilworth Park

Dublin 6w