Brian Stanley questions UN veto and potential legal challenge

Thanks, Clio Earlock, and welcome to Niamh and to Stephen, and indeed to Roger Cole. I've met Roger a number of times down through the years on various campaigns, and it's good to see you here, Roger. I want to start with the declarations, because I was involved in the campaigns around Nice and Lisbon, and indeed the Single European Act and various other ones down through the years, and I can recall these declarations, and thanks, Stephen, for providing the actual copies of the declaration, which I read this morning again. And the question I have in relation to that is that I know that they're national declarations that are not made by a political party or by a government, but they're on behalf of the Irish people, and they are attached to the Nice and Lisbon Treaty. And the question I have is that, and I do recall the late Raymond Crotty in 1986, took a case, Supreme Court case, which he won, which then ensured that we had referendums in all other subsequent major changes in terms of integration into the European Union, which I'm in favour of, by the way, being part of the European Union. I might have some disagreements about what shape that takes, but I think it's a good thing that we're in a common market and that we're in a union, whatever faults that may have. But the question I have, do you envisage that there will be a constitutional challenge to this in the courts if this is passed by legislation? That's one question. The veto, and it's, again, you set out helpfully in the document that the number of votes that were actually, the number of occasions when the veto wasn't actually used because you actually say in the document that 264 out of 284 resolutions voted on the council were passed with no power exercise in the veto. And you might just address in terms of reform of the, you know, I recognise the fact that the Security Council, the permanent members of the Security Council, this, you know, this isn't the way it should be. And Ireland, I remember lobbying in Geneva for Ireland to have a place as a non-permanent member back a number of years ago. And Ireland, you know, people there from different political persuasions were very receptive to the case we were making. By virtue of the fact that we were an independent state, we had, you know, we had been colonised. One part of the country still somewhat colonised, but a work in progress there, thankfully. And the fact that we were a neutral state, you know, the, you know, the other, but, you know, particularly former colonies, you know, states that had been formed out of former colonies in the Southern Hemisphere were very, very, very open, as were indeed others to the case. And that helped Ireland to get a place on the, as a non-permanent member. But, you know, I mean, I would see that as being one of the reforms that needs to happen, that the non-permanent members need to have, you know, equal say at the UN Security Council. And the other question I had was around, the whole question about, and I need my address to this as well, just around usherabba abdicating our responsibilities. You know, we're piggybacking on, we're piggybacking on Uncle Sam and John Bull, you know, the RAF and the, the Yanks, they'll look after us. You might just deal with that. And the, you mentioned as well about self-certifying, you know, that the Dáil, or the government as a majority, will be self-certifying. The argument's made that, sure, you know, that's democracy, that's sovereignty. The Irish people have elected, you know, parties to the Dáil. There's a government formed out of that. And that government's democratically elected, which we all accept. That's the case. And isn't that the ultimate sovereignty? And I would just put that question to both of you if you could address that. Thank you. Thank you very much for those, for that WA Stanley. I think regarding the declaration, I can't predict whether there will or won't be a constitutional challenge. Slightly. I think that there's a good chance of it, yes. As to whether it would be successful or not, I don't know. But I think there was every chance that there could be a constitutional challenge. Advocates of neutrality have won referendums previously. There was the Crotty case, and there was the McKenna and Coughlin cases. They were technically on the issue of divorce, but they were strategic litigation. So I think there's every chance. I mean, if I could draw the committee's attention to the case of Heenehan and Minister for Housing Planning and the local government, and I've included the citation and so forth in my document. In that case, Mr. Justice Murray in the Supreme Court said that when a referendum is held, this constitutes, the commitment given by the government to the people in that context, constitutes a type of pact between the people and their elected representatives. That was in a different context, so the facts weren't the same. It was in the context of the Senate referendum in 1979, which people, you know, a lot of people would forget about. So the facts are a bit more obscure, but I think a possible argument could be made in this case that a commitment was similarly given. It wasn't part of the official legislation just the same way in 1979. It wasn't part of what was exactly on the ballot paper, but a commitment was given, and it was embodied in the Referendum Commission literature, which was distributed to every single house in the country paid for by the taxpayer. So I think that that could be something that could allow for a referendum to succeed if this is passed without another, by the door, without another referendum. As regards the veto, I think that no one, not a single person, you know, taking it from a first principles perspective would have designed the United Nations as it is. It doesn't make any sense in principle or in theory why certain members would have a permanent position and others don't. We all know the history, which is that those five permanent members were the victors in the Second World War, and they insisted on that place in order to set up the United Nations. So I'm very keen to listen to any alternative anyone has in terms of reforming the UN and reforming the Security Council, provided it's not something that results in the collapse of the UN, because that's a very real risk. We know what happened with the League of Nations. It didn't have the buy-in from the big powers. So that's what needs to be avoided. But I think until such a time as there's a workable alternative, we have to stick with the United Nations, because it's better than the law of the jungle. Regarding the abdicating of... No, I think there was a comment you made, and I wanted to just return to... Do you have a comment? Yeah, oh, okay. Still having to finish. Okay, well, I'll just briefly deal with abdicating responsibility. I mean, I don't accept that we have a responsibility to defend, you know, Europe. I think that we have a responsibility, first of all, to protect ourselves. You had three neutral states during the Cold War, Yugoslavia, Finland, and Austria that were in Russia's back garden, and they were never invaded. They adhered scrupulously to their neutrality. So the idea that Russia is going to invade us when they haven't even invaded those neutral states and their back garden is not really credible. So I don't think that we have an obligation to be a sort of security obligation in that way. Sovereign... Okay, I have to call time. Okay. Sorry, you can maybe address it when you're answering the other ones.