State ratified 145 treaties last year
THE Government ratified almost 300 European and international treaties in the seven years leading up to the failed Lisbon Treaty referendum -- 145 of them in the last year alone.
The treaties -- none of which were placed before the electorate -- included agreements on defence, organised crime, extradition, air services, chemical weapons, taxation and mutual assistance in criminal matters.
Details of the treaties emerged as an all-party oireachtas committee begins a review of our contentious referendum process.
The review will examine whether the bulk of future EU treaties can be ratified by parliamentary vote.
It is being undertaken amid criticism in legal and political circles about whether there was a need to place the entirety of the Lisbon treaty before the electorate. All the other EU member states are set to ratify it by parliamentary vote.
"There is so little in Lisbon," said Senator Eugene Regan, a Fine Gael member of the oireachtas joint committee on the Constitution which will produce a final report on referenda early next year.
"It was a brilliantly conducted negative campaign where everything was turned into Armageddon, but much of what it contains is already covered by constitutional licence given to the Oireachtas by previous referendums."
For the last two decades, the Government has adopted a cautious approach to ratification of treaties owing to a Constitutional challenge to the method of ratification of the Single European Act.
The Crotty ruling authorised the ratification of future treaties by statute, rather than a referendum, as long as the amendments did not alter the "essential scope and objectives" of the existing EU, but the ruling has become an authority for the proposition that a referendum is required to amend the Constitution every time a new EU treaty is agreed.
Now Crotty and a series of Supreme Court rulings will now be reviewed by the joint committee.
- Dearbhail McDonald Legal Editor
