Meh, what a bunch of guarantees are offered to Ireland. Continued tax haven status for corporations, avoidance of military obligations and a near complete ban on abortion.


Here are my thoughts on them:

It's 2008, not 1922. Just join NATO, like other responsible and developed democracies.
It's 2008, stop prosecuting raped fourteen year-olds who seek to abort their uncle's baby as if you're Saudi Arabia.
It's 2008, get to the fact that bending over backwards to the whims of corporations has got the capitalist world into major trouble.


Oh well, whatever it takes.

as regards all member states, nothing in the Lisbon treaty makes any change of any kind to the extent or operation of the Union’s competence in relation to taxation;

the Lisbon treaty does not prejudice the security and defence policy of member states, including Ireland’s traditional policy of neutrality, and the obligations of most other member states;

a guarantee that the provisions of the Irish constitution concerning the right to life, education and the family are wholly unaffected by the conferral of legal status on the EU charter of fundamental rights by the Lisbon treaty and by the justice and home affairs provision of the treaty.