Read the question - carefully

I know we alluded to this yesterday, but it's worth hammering home. It seems Michael O'Leary truly is confused and believes Ireland is about to have a referendum on its membership of the EU (the Generation 'Yes' campaign must be having some impact).

His €500,000 campaign is called 'Ryanair votes YES to Europe', and not one of his (4) reasons for voting 'yes' have anything at all to do with the Lisbon Treaty, and instead are exclusively about Ireland's EU membership.

And they are all negative reasons. Nothing positive in there about the Treaty whatsoever.

Take a look here: http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/news.php?yr=09&month=aug&story=gen-en-250809

In fact, if anything, these arguments read like reasons to reject the Treaty. If, as O'Leary claims, Ireland and Ryanair have done so well out of the status quo, then why do we need the Lisbon Treaty? Seriously, what possible argument is there for it?

We thought the 'yes' side said they wanted to move the debate on, and to talk about the detail of the Treaty? Obviously not. Probably because they either haven't read it, don't understand it, or simply can't come up with anything positive which outweighs all the bad stuff.

Yes, we know the EU single market has been good for Ireland and probably for all EU members. But this isn't about the single market. This is about creating a much more political EU, which is about far, far more than just the single market.

For the last time (or probably not) - Ireland's membership of the EU, or the euro, is not in question.

What's up for debate is what kind of Europe we want to see - do we want to create new and unaccountable EU institutions, like an EU President, an EU Foreign Minister, an EU Public Prosecutor? Do we want to make majority voting the norm and give the EU powers to legislate over just about every area of policy - from health to transport to employment to immigration to defence? Do we want to make the European Court of Justice the highest court in the land, with new powers to decide on everything from the rights of criminal suspects to social security for migrants? Do we want to give the green light to an organisation which has ignored the will of tens of millions of people to reject further EU integration? Do we want to make it easier for EU leaders to amend the rules the game in future, without the kind of parliamentary and public scrutiny that is currently required? Do we want this to be the last proper public debate we have about EU integration, while we can still do something about it?

If you answer no to any of the above, then the Lisbon Treaty is not for you.