A vote needed on EU membership

News that David Cameron has pledged to hold a referendum on continued British membership of the EU is welcome indeed.

One can only hope that other member States will follow suit, particularly our own.

Continued EU membership is doubtless going to entail further transfer of sovereignty from directly elected national parliaments to EU institutions. And while I’m sure there are those that would welcome such developments – particularly among some of our ideologically-driven Government TDs – it must be left to the citizens to decide if this is the direction the country should take.

In recent years, this country has seen several referenda on European issues, with each one surreptitiously bringing us closer to a single European State; our country effectively being run from Brussels. And yet on each occasion, the diminution of sovereignty that accompanied the referendum was buried deep in the detail of the text.

And even when such referenda were democratically rejected, the results were dismissed as the result of fear or lack of understanding of the issues, and a re-run of each referendum was held, in order that we remain on an apparently pre-ordained path towards European unity.

What is now required here is a referendum similar to the one Mr Cameron has pledged, in which the full implication is clear and simple – EU membership, yes or no? Democracy should not be side-stepped just because the politicians we elected on the back of promises of burden-sharing and economic recovery happen to harbour ambitions of a united Europe. They have no mandate to oversee the demise of a sovereign Irish State. That decision rests solely – and directly – with the Irish people.

Simon O’Connor

Crumlin

Dublin 12