Kildare hosts conference on EU Constitution

Stellan Hermansson, Cristín McCauley and Aengus Ó Snodaigh

On the day, Kildare Sinn Féin hosted a meeting of Sinn Féin representatives from throughout the Leinster constituency in the Town House Hotel on the theme of Europe, which was addressed by Eoin Ó Broin from the party's European Department, Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD and Stellan Hermansson, General Secretary of the GUE/NGL (Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left) in the European Parliament.

Ó Broin outlined the party's process of "critical engagement" with the institutions of the EU and in a discussion on Sinn Féin's forthcoming campaign against the EU Constitution, encouraged republicans to begin mobilising. Ó Broin said it "represents one of the single biggest threats to the goals of Irish republicanism".

Both Hermansson and Ó Snodaigh spoke of people's duty to oppose the constitution for many different reasons, saying that the Irish state would be "forced to increase its military capacity and finance the EU's military interventions"; that it would put a "nail in the coffin of neutrality and lead to the wholesale privatisation of public services with economic policy controlled by unelected and faceless bureaucrats in the EU Commission".