Martin: EU needs to know Ireland’s intentions by December

THE Government should be able to tell its EU partners in December if it will hold another referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, Foreign Minister Michael Martin has intimated.

He acknowledged that the member states would need to know Ireland’s intentions by then in light of the upcoming elections to the European Parliament in June.

But he refused to say if the Government would take up the suggestion made by French President Nicholas Sarkozy and hold a referendum with the elections next summer.

Speaking after a foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, Mr Martin said that the Taoiseach would make a progress report in October based on the outcome of research and consultation with the Oireachtas and anybody pro-European with an interest in the Lisbon Treaty.

“By the end of the year people need clarity,” he said and added later, “People will need to know. There are obvious timetables. People will need to know under what conditions certain things are going to happen.”

However, it was much too premature to talk about having a second referendum to coincide with the EP elections. “We have not even decided to have a second vote,” he said.

The first step was to discover why there was such a definitive vote against the Lisbon Treaty through the research now under way and by consulting with elected politicians, both domestically and in the EU, and with groups from civil society.

These would include groups that campaigned against Lisbon, but he made it clear that they must be pro-Europe groups. “We have to reconcile the general view held that people want to remain at the heart of Europe with our decision to vote no,” Mr Martin said.

He believed it was also necessary to evaluate the consequences of voting against Lisbon and to let people make up their own minds on where they stood on this.

Mr Martin would not comment on the statement from Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny that he would not like to have another vote before the European elections and said he would like to have further discussions with him about this if the issue arises.

The minister said the government accepted that there is no appetite at all among fellow EU countries to renegotiate the treaty. “That is not being arrogant or dismissive on their part”, he said, adding that seven years has been spent working out how to reform the institutions and they don’t want to spend much longer.

Referring to Mr Sarkozy’s visit and reported remarks, Mr Martin said that Ireland must understand we are part of the wider European community and that people are going to say things.

“We cannot censor European politicians.

“What they say may not tally with what we ourselves think but we should not get overly excited. People have positions and they are entitled to have them,” he said.