Ireland votes again … but this time with ill-feeling

Ian Traynor
guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 September 2009 19.53 BST


A campaign poster urging Irish voters to 'Vote Yes' in a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is pictured on a bus shelter in Dublin, in Ireland. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images

Amid the mud, machines and marquees of Ireland's grandest farming fair, Padraig Doyle is wrestling with a dilemma.

The last time the 70-year-old Wexford beef farmer was allowed to voice an opinion on the EU, he voted no to the Lisbon treaty. That was 16 months ago, a different world in which Ireland was prospering. Since then, the Celtic tiger has stopped roaring. The banks have collapsed. House prices have slumped. Unemployment has soared.

On Friday, Doyle will vote again in a second referendum on Lisbon. This time he will vote yes. Because he is scared.

"Well, the European bank might stop writing the cheques. That would be a bad thing. And we'll be isolated. That's why I think I'll vote yes this time."

Ber Murray, a farmer's wife from Cork, has also changed her mind.

"I voted no the last time because I didn't understand what it was all about. This time I'm much better informed and I'm voting yes," she said.

The change of heart from Doyle and Murray may signal a broader national shift as Ireland gears up for a vote that has policy-makers in Berlin, Brussels, Paris, and Dublin holding their breath and praying for a positive outcome.

Lisbon – dull, indigestible and important – is the latest attempt to recalibrate the union's modus operandi. It has been eight years in gestation, an agonisingly slow birth marred by challenges, disputes, and crises.

A second Irish no would mean the charter is doomed. A yes will revive the project and quickly give Europe its first sitting president, a new foreign policy chief and apparatus, a voting system that for the first time recognises Germany's place as the EU's biggest power, and the abolition of national vetoes in key policy-making areas such as immigration, justice, and police affairs.

Last year, Ireland's 120,000 farmers played a big role in turning the country against Lisbon. This time it is different.

"It was a disaster," said a government adviser on the referendum campaign. "In rural constituencies the farmers were the key factor in swinging the no vote. This time they are unequivocal in their support."

Indeed, an opinion poll last week showed 68% of farmers support the treaty. And flurry of polls broadly indicate a 3-2 majority for the treaty, but that is after stripping out the variable levels of "don't knows" or "won't" votes.

That the Irish are having to vote for a second time in little over a year is an outrageous usurpation of democracy, according to the no camp. "People are very annoyed about that. Last year's no vote was a vote for sanity," said Roger Cole, a leftwing opponent of Lisbon. "This is a class war. It's about the rich beating the hell out of the poor."

Last year the poor voted overwhelmingly no. This year the captains of industry are pouring money into the yes campaign. Michael O'Leary, Ryanair's boss, has taken out full-page newspaper ads offering 1m free flights for a yes vote.

The entire Irish establishment is campaigning much more strongly for Lisbon. All but four of Ireland's 166 MPs support the treaty, as do the influential Catholic church hierarchy, the trade unions, the Irish Farmers' Association.

A defeat on Friday could bring down Brian Cowen's government. Even a slim victory will be a debacle given the near total commitment to Lisbon across the political, business, and church elites.

Ranged against them is a vociferous band from the extreme left and the hard right, which makes outlandish claims that are difficult to refute.

The minimum wage, for example, will be quartered to €1.84 under Lisbon, Europe will morph into a militaristic superstate.

The scaremongering is matched on the government side by a robust campaign that seeks to turn the referendum into a vote not so much on the treaty as on Ireland's very future in the EU.

"I'm not threatening the people," said Brian Lenihan, the Irish finance minister. "I'm pointing out our opportunity to get our goodwill ... The crucial issue is Ireland and Europe will not stay the same [if there's a no vote]. There will be a substantial loss of goodwill towards Ireland."

Stephen Collins, the Irish Times's political editor, says that the re-run campaign is much more emotional than last time. "This time the yes side is much more ruthless. It's asking 'is Europe good for us or bad for us.'"

The government is not saying that Ireland will be kicked out of the EU if it votes no, it is warning that Ireland will be snubbed, mocked, and marginalised by the rest of Europe.

The big problem for the Cowen government is that it is held in contempt. Over the past year, it has presided over colossal economic and financial failure. The budget deficit is double the EU average, unemployment is the second highest in the EU, tax rises and more public spending cuts are imminent.

Its plan to create a "bad bank" with €55bn of taxpayers' money is commonly seen as a ruse to get the public to foot the bill for government mismanagement and the losses of crony bankers in cahoots with dubious property developers.

For the first time in a generation, according to government figures last week, the Irish are emigrating again.

Under such conditions, it is difficult for a government to win a vote. Opposition leaders such as Eamon Gilmore of the Irish Labour party say the best thing Cowen could do to win the referendum is to keep out of the campaign.

But Dick Roche, the Europe minister, said there is no chance of that. "We won't keep out of it. If we get this wrong, it will be an absolute disaster for the country."

The vote appears poised between anger and fear – anger at the government and fear of the consequences of saying no in an economic crisis that would have been worse without the cushion of being in Europe's single currency zone.

Without support from the European Central Bank, said Lenihan "not only would our financial system have collapsed, it would have been impossible to repair it."

Paul Gillespie, an international relations expert at University College Dublin, says the crisis has shifted the terms of the referendum. "The arrogance and the ignorance of the Irish boom were reflected in last year's no vote. But our self-confidence has been shaken. And people are differentiating between the government and the actual issue."

Ireland is the only country of 27 in the EU that has been and is being allowed to vote on a treaty that few voters in Europe understand or care about.

Unlike everywhere else, The Irish have been subjected to a barrage of information and misinformation for 16 months. With Friday's vote, no one will be able to claim they did not understand what they were doing.

The timetable

December 2001 At Laeken palace in Brussels, EU leaders start the push for a European constitution, putting ex-French president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, in charge of the talking shop

October 2004 Constitution agreed by EU leaders in Rome, but ...

May-June 2005 French and then Dutch give it the thumbs down in referendums. The constitution is dead, but ...

January 2007 Revived under a new name and stripped of some of its grandiloquence by the EU presidency of Germany's Angela Merkel

October-December 2007 New deal is finalised and signed as Lisbon treaty, a lengthy, inelegant series of amendments to previous EU treaties, but ...

June 2008 While 26 of 27 countries have opted for parliamentary ratification of the treaty, Ireland is constitutionally bound to stage a popular ballot and votes the project down by 53.4% to 46.6%, but...

October 2009 Ireland has been talked into voting again, after securing several pledges that have nothing to do with the treaty, and a guaranteed place as a European commissioner. The Czech and Polish presidents also still have to sign off on their parliaments' ratification

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