Creighton unwitting poster girl for critics of Lisbon
Libertas' billboard, adorned with a quote from Fine Gael golden girl Lucinda Creighton on a European army, will only be erected in her own constituency
Fine Gael golden girl Lucinda Creighton is being targeted in an advertisement by campaigners for a No vote in the EU referendum over her support for a "European Army".
Libertas is putting up billboards in the Fine Gael TDs constituency highlighting her calls in the past for an EU army.
The US style negative advert personalises an increasingly bitter referendum campaign. Libertas is headed up by multi-millionaire entrepreneur, Declan J Ganley.
The group is running a nationwide billboard campaign over the next fortnight highlighting the damage it says the Reform Treaty will do to business.
The "Lisbon is Bad for Business" ad campaign will cost €60,000.
But Libertas has also designed a special billboard poster, which will solely be on display in the Fine Gael European Affairs spokespersons constituency of Dublin South-East.
Libertas is basing the poster on comments by Ms Creighton five years ago.
"A weak and divided Europe is not a good thing. As we saw in the recent crisis, the world needs a counterbalance to US strength. We need a European army," she said in 2003.
According to a Libertas spokesman, Ms Creighton wants the Irish people to vote for one version of Europe, "while behind the scenes she's working hard to achieve another. This is part of a pattern by the big parties, none of whom will discuss their actual views on Europe openly.
"Lucinda and Fine Gael favour a militarised, federal Europe, and her party colleague Gay Mitchell has, on occasion ,said that Ireland shouldn't be having a referendum as it could get in the way of 'progress' in Europe," the spokesman said. Ms Creighton doesn't deny calling for a European army, but says she is talking about peace-keeping and peace-enforcing operations, lead by the EU, under a United Nations mandate.
She points to the Irish Army's involvement in EU forces in Kosovo and Chad as examples of what she wants to see.
Ms Creighton said Libertas would be better off trying to inform people about what's actually in the Treaty.
"They are deliberately trying to misrepresent me," she said.
"And how are Libertas financing this? It's not like they are a regular political party who engage in normal fundraising," she said.
But Libertas says the billboard is designed to tell people about Ms Creighton's views.
- Fionnan Sheahan Political Editor
