30th August 2002

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People Won't Be Fooled by government tactics

Sinn Fein Councillor Dessie Ellis this morning accused Fianna Fáil and PD ministers of becoming increasingly hysterical in their attempts to try to frighten voters into reversing their previous decision on the rerun of Nice. This is hardly surprising, given the Government's recklessness in squandering the economic boom, which was generated by Irish workers' increased productivity over the past 10 years.

Cllr. Ellis said:

In the latest scare mongering, Mr Ahern and Ms Harney try to claim that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) will fall if the people were to reaffirm their ``No'' vote. But why should this be so? We would still be a full member of the EU and, free of the centralization of Nice, we would be in a stronger position to set tax rates which attract FDI (if that is what WE decide). Applicant countries would still be able to join via the same Accession Treaty mechanism that we did and thus prevent a 2-tier EU, where most investment would be sucked towards the centre.

In fact, FDI is already falling and is set to fall further because of the global IT recession. This fall will be compounded, not by a ``No To Nice 2'' vote, but by the increasing perception of corruption in Ireland as revealed in the latest Index from Transparency International. According to TI, Ireland's fall of 5 places to 23rd will adversely affect FDI into Ireland.

The problem for FF and the PDs is that they now lack credibility because of their failure to effectively tackle corruption and because they broke many of their election promises as soon as they conned their way back into government.''

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