Ireland will hold a second referendum on the European Union's key Lisbon reform treaty on October 2, Prime Minister Brian Cowen told parliament on Wednesday.
Cowen said he had set the date after receiving assurances from his European colleagues on issues that concerned Irish voters, who threw the EU into disarray when they rejected the treaty in a referendum in June last year.
If Ireland saves Europe again by rejecting the treaty, the Eurocrats will be back to hold a third vote. Then a fourth. Until the Irish approve it.
That will be the last significant vote any Irish citizen casts--or any European really--as power over their lives will drift to a distant and uncaring (and unaccountable) bureaucracy in Brussels.
The Europeans are truly and royally reformed, that's for sure.
