YES... To keep our commissioner.

Ireland's electorate will vote to ratify or reject once more an unchanged Lisbon Treaty on October 2nd. The easiest choice will be taken by those who abstain. Voters against this treaty make a choice to risk alienating the monetary mandarins of the ECB and unnerving the international direct investment that our vulnerable and leaky economy depends on. Those who vote Yes choose to trust that a place at the european table secures an audience for Irish concerns and to trust in further immersion in a European experiment which emerged from the wreckage of two world wars. Last year when the Irish Voters faced this choice about the nature of our future relationship with Europe the majority asserted a right to say No, a right to better assurances, a right to understand what this Treaty will mean and will change.
So it is then that we vote on an unchanged Treaty, but one now with assurances attached. Perhaps the most important of which for a small nation with a lowly weighted voting right, will be the right to retain a Commissioner. In this issue alone the NO lobby , like Othello, have done this state some service. David Cochrane, journalist, on Politics.ie has pointed out that this alone suggests a single salient sound bite that the Yes side can win on; YES- to keep our commissioner.
It is overwhelmingly important for anyone in business, anyone with a stake in the free market, whether an employee or a shareholder to understand that ratifying Lisbon is integral to economic recovery by its strengthening of the status of the ECB and the unity of the eurozone's import-export channels. To those fearful of the free market's big business agenda I can give reassurance that the counter-balance of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, now to be the EU Charter will now have full Legal status in EU Law without affecting any articles in the Irish Constitution. This charter for the first time makes legal the civil, political, economic and social rights recognised by the EU. In fact this EU Charter, if Lisbon be ratified, should make managers, HR departments and judiciary alike more wary of due process- and probably will provide the Trade Union movement with a renewed relevance.