Anthony Coughlan

Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin and Secretary of the National Platform.

From an article about Anthony Coughlan in the "Sunday Business Post":

"Cork-born, left-wing academic, the intellectual backbone for the alternative position on the European Union ... His National Platform helped to defeat the Nice Treaty referendum [at the first] time ... His campaign against the Nice Treaty helped bring together an unlikely coalition, from anti-abortion activists to Sinn Féiners and Greens. Their arguments were disparate, but hit home with 54 per cent of those who voted."

"The [Irish] government could -- and did -- spend as much taxpayers' money as it wished persuading those taxpayers how they should vote [in referendums]. It continued until 1995 when the Supreme Court declared the practice undemocratic and unconstitutional. The driving force behind that case, brought by Green [Ex-]MEP Patricia McKenna, was Anthony Coughlan."