February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
“The treaty refers to sub-paragraphs of former sub-paragraphs and other documents and there is no person this side of Timbuktu who would be in a position to understand it,” he said.
“While Mr. McCreevy backs the treaty, he said he has not read it,” the Irish Times reported.
This particular gem came to light even as EU political leaders scrambled to pick up the pieces after last week’s rejection by Irish voters of the Lisbon Treaty, a seemingly unintelligible tract underpinning some actually quite understandable and ultimately obvious ideas for a larger and more centralized European Union.
The Irish vote has plunged the unified European project into a crisis to which many on the continent will merely shrug in response and say “plus ca change.”
Given past exeprience, Ireland and its 26 European partners will eventually find a way out of this latest mess but in the meantime a start night be made in hiring people who can write crucial proposals for the future of Europe in plain language.
As for Mr. McCreevy? Let’s hope he doesn’t apply his reasoning on the treaty to such humdrum things as buying a second hand car. For if he does, the man will end up with a world class collection of lemons.