Socialist Party MEP Joe Higgins last night called for a ‘No’ vote to Lisbon to punish the government for their handling of the financial crisis. In the same breath he described Cóir’s poster slogans about the minimum wage “a serious distraction away from the points our party is making.”

Mr Higgins can’t have his cake and eat it. People’s anger with the government about their management of the economy is understandable, but it is just as much of a “distraction” in the Lisbon debate as Cóir’s blatant lies about the minimum wage.

We need to distinguish between a desire to send a message to the government and our long-term interest as a nation. However tempting it may be to kick the government, and however easy for opportunistic Eurosceptics to take advantage of this frustration, we must not let this get in the way of what will actually help us out of this crisis – the creation of jobs and attraction of foreign investment that passing Lisbon will mean.

Now is the time to focus on what impact Lisbon will actually have on real people’s lives – in the areas of economic stimulation, workers’ rights and crime, to name just a few.

At the same event Mr Higgins’s Socialist Party conceded that voting ‘No’ to Lisbon would not “move things forward” in relation to pay and conditions for workers. This is what we actually need to be debating. We need to be discussing Article 3.3 TEU which provides for the creation of “a highly competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment and social protection” along with “combat[ing] social exclusion and discrimination” and “promot[ing] social justice and protection”. This is the first time that social objectives have been set out so clearly in EU law. That is what is what we need to keep sight of in this debate.

Helping our economy recover, creating jobs and protecting workers’ rights is important. Punishing the government in a way that will punish every citizen of this country for many years to come is not.

Irish people are crying out for a real debate on the facts – not the cheap shots being offered up by No campaigners at present. Generationyes.ie is where you can find these facts. Watch out for our piece on workers’ rights which will go up in the next couple of days.