Determining what exactly the No side wants in the context of any attempt to resolve the Lisbon Treaty impasse is fraught with difficulties, writes Mark Hennessy.
TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen is not short of advice as he faces up to the crisis caused by Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, but little of it helps if all of the rest of the European Union ratifies the text.
The demands that anti-Lisbon organisations had prior to Thursday's referendum were not static, and they will undoubtedly expand both in scope and ambition now that confidence is high after a poll victory.
In addition, it is not simply a matter of Cowen securing protocols, declarations or other diplomatic bolt-holes before coming back to the people once more with a rejigged Constitutional amendment.
Since the variety of players on the two sides fundamentally disagree on what Lisbon meant in the first place and in some cases object to the very existence of the EU, it is difficult to see how any terminology could be found to narrow disagreements, let alone resolve them.
Former Green MEP Patricia McKenna, who fronted the People's Movement campaign, has insisted that Cowen has adopted the wrong stance in the wake of Friday's result. He should be telling other EU states, she said, that Lisbon is dead and not allowing European Commission president José Manuel Barroso to quote him saying that it is not.
Lisbon cannot simply be amended and returned to the Irish people, she said, since it is not simply a matter of excluding Ireland from certain issues, such as defence, but, rather, it is about the very direction in which the EU is headed.
Refusing to accept a Lisbon II referendum, she said the EU must go back to square one and negotiate a new treaty that would include both sides of the debate on the future of the Union.
The European Convention, which helped draft the text of the aborted EU constitution, had, she said, included national parliament representatives, but not people hostile to the EU's ever-increasing development. Furthermore, the convention's leadership - known as the Praesidium - was kept safely in the hands of those like Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, bent on turning the EU into a federal state.
A protocol excluding Ireland from anything to do with EU defence and military matters will not suffice, McKenna said, since it would not stop any of the rest developing such policies.
"A protocol is not enough. This isn't what we want. The issue is that the EU is becoming more militarised. And we believe that there are many people in other EU countries who agree with us," she said.
On the future shape of the European Commission, McKenna said the People's Movement believed that each state should have a place at the table, while the use of qualified majority voting should be limited.
However, the situation is complicated because McKenna does not object to the principle itself - even in major issues - since she supports its use in reaching international agreements on global warming.
Fears about the future for State control of public services is an issue that is put forward by McKenna, the Socialist Party and a host of others on the No side, though not by Libertas, and the Government would have to find some way of copperfastening protections already included in the treaty - but not believed by the No camp - before there would be any chance of assuaging their concerns on these points.
Sinn Féin has put forward a list of clear negotiating demands:
• the retention of a permanent commissioner;
• the retention of existing voting strength at the Council of Ministers;
• the retention and strengthening of key strategic vetoes on tax, public services and international trade;
• the maintenance of the absolute right of Irish citizens to have the final say in significant changes to the EU treaties;
• a specific article protecting our neutrality;
• a specific protocol explicitly exempting vital public services from rules of competition and state aid;
• opt-outs from expenditure on nuclear power and military capabilities;
• the inclusion of a social progress clause and greater protections for workers' rights;
• the active promotion of fair trade over free trade;
• the strengthening of the role of member-state parliaments and citizens.
Some of these could be dealt with by protocols, ie legally-binding additions to the treaty, but this would mean the 18 states that have already ratified the treaty would have to go back and do the work again.
Most would be reluctant to do so, particularly since anti-EU sentiment in these states will have been rekindled by the Irish No and demands would be heard for referendums in each of them.
For instance, the Netherlands voted against the EU constitution in 2005, yet just 40,000 signed a petition seeking a referendum on Lisbon prior to the Irish result.
However, much of Sinn Féin's demands about the commission's membership and the use of qualified majority voting at the Council of Ministers cannot be met by additions to the treaty.
Declan Ganley of Libertas is sticking to the "eight reasons to vote No" he advocated during the campaign, which castigated the partial loss of a commissioner and railed against changes to voting weights at Council of Ministers' meetings.
Besides reopening the text of the treaty, the difficulty here is that the commission's final shape under Lisbon was a compromise in itself.
The bigger states had preferred the creation of senior and junior posts at the Berlaymont table. Under this proposal, the commission would have been slightly reduced in size from its strength of today, but the junior posts would be shared by the smaller member states.
In addition, Ganley objects to the selection for a 2½-year term of an unelected president of the European Council by EU leaders and an EU high representative for common and foreign security policy, ie an EU foreign minister.
The EU president - described as a chairman rather than a chief by the Yes camp, although, no doubt, the role would morph into something more substantial in time - should be directly elected, Libertas says.
The changes to voting weights proposed by Lisbon, which introduced a double majority system based on population and state numbers, would have to be changed to maintain Ireland's existing voting strength.
Changes would also have to be made to any future text to ensure Ireland's control of its own corporation tax, and other taxes would remain under the sole control of Ireland - something the Yes camp said is already protected.
The number of issues being transferred from needing the unanimous agreement of all EU member states to qualified majority voting should be reduced - though Ireland already has opt-outs on all justice, policing and immigration issues.
Libertas has also argued that Lisbon, if passed, would have given the EU control of foreign direct investment rules, though the Government denied that this would have damaged our ability to win new factories.
In addition, the lobby group has complained that the treaty would have enshrined EU law as superior to Irish law, but this is something - on issues where sovereignty has been pooled with other EU states - that has been the case since we joined.
Most of those on the No camp would unite in their determination to rewrite Article 48 of the treaty, which would have allowed EU leaders to make some future changes without needing a new treaty.
Throughout, the Government insisted that the text made clear that Ireland would have had to go back to the people and seek their agreement where sovereignty was being transferred.
Besides wanting to stop the EU from doing anything that would make it develop into a more powerful player on the world stage, Socialist Party leader Joe Higgins wants a fundamental redrawing of its economic attitudes.
EU leaders have shown contempt for the Irish decision since Friday, he said, while the Government's instinct has been to apologise for its people's actions, rather than stand by them.
"They should be warned that to return to the Irish people with a warmed-up version of Lisbon will be met with a determined campaign of opposition," said the former Dublin West TD.
In some cases, there are groups who are not looking for concessions, such as Cóir, the organisation led by Richard Greene which included members of Youth Defence and which warned that Lisbon would introduce abortion, euthanasia and prostitution - allegations that were even rejected by many on the No side. The idea that it has a list of demands that could be satisfied by the Government is fanciful in the extreme.
Though it was overshadowed by Libertas, the issues put forward about neutrality by the Peace and Neutrality Alliance (Pana) - an umbrella group with 38 affiliates, including the State's second-largest union, Unite - have clearly resonated with many sections of the public.
Pana's Roger Cole said his organisation wanted Constitutional protection for Ireland's neutrality far beyond that offered by one introduced after the Government secured the Seville declaration in the wake of the first Nice Treaty referendum defeat.
Such a Constitutional amendment would require Ireland to be actively neutral, as it were, rather than its hitherto more passive position, and would certainly require a block of US troops using Shannon.
Pana wants a protocol similar to the one Denmark got after it defeated the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 - which, ironically, it was on the point of getting rid of in September/October before the Irish No was delivered - which would exclude Ireland from any involvement in an EU common defence, or having to pay for anything that the EU might get up to in this area. However, Pana, like many others on the No side, has yet to sit down and analyse the outcome of last week's referendum. When it does, it lists of demands can be expected to increase.