Quote Originally Posted by carlos marvado View Post
I understand what you mean Westie, but in the same way as a person who wishes to maintain their independence of action including financial independence, should never get over their head in debt, so too should a nation not run up a massive sovereign debt to outside institutions. Given that the Irish exchequer will take in a little over 30 billion in review this year, but spend some 20 odd billion in excess of this, the government can either slash public expenditure by 20 billion and thereby destroy the national infrastructure and social cohesion, which would make Greece look like a tea party, or we can borrow it and give our creditors a say over how we run our affairs. From the perspective of the EU countries that will be contributing most to this fund (France and Germany), one can hardly expect their electorates to accept that their tax Euros are going to be pumped into an Irish or Greek black hole without a quid pro quo in the form of their governments or the EU having some input into Irish policy. Without this, there is no guarantee that an Irish government wont squander French and German taxpayers' Euros in the same way that they have been squandering Irish taxpayers' Euros for the past decade. If you are in debt to an Irish bank, you cannot afford to ignore your bank manager and we cannot afford to ignore the EU.
giving more and more power to the EU is all well and good if it works in our favor.If it doesnt the damage is done as the only way to go back is to leave the EU. We can do it without going further and giving more power to the eU besides they need us to rectify their treaties not that our vote would count in the eyes of our government.

Westside.