The phoney war is over and it's war to the knife in the Nice referendum, writes Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent.
You never really felt the Nice campaign was properly under way until the State's largest party weighed in with the formal launch of its drive for a Yes vote. It was a rather staid occasion: the Taoiseach took all the questions as Brian Cowen, sporting a fresh haircut for his new job as director of elections, looked on.
Reflecting the current political climate, a party figure told me of his relief that there were no placard-waving demonstrators outside the Burlington Hotel. The platform group included Chief Whip Mary Hanafin and European Minister of State Dick Roche, but of lightning conductor Charlie McCreevy there was no sign.
Another Minister said privately that if the vote were held in the morning, it could well be lost. Few honest Fianna Fáilers or pro-Nice activists would disagree. Everything hangs on the next 20 days.
That there will be a better-funded and more vocal Yes campaign there is no doubt. The Soldiers of Destiny are shelling out €500,000, the same outlay as the employers' group, IBEC. The billboards and the posters are going up and there will be no shortage of faces and voices in the electronic media to put the case for Nice.
How much of it is a gesture by what Eamon Dunphy calls "Official Ireland" and how much a grassroots phenomenon is still in doubt. But if there had been a Yes campaign like this in the first referendum, Nice would have been ratified comfortably and we would now be teasing out the finer points of accession by the candidate countries.
It is a time-honoured cliché of Irish politics that we have a highly sophisticated electorate. The theory goes that the voters can and will distinguish between the failings of the Government and the findings of the Flood tribunal on the one hand and their responsibilities as "good Europeans" on the other.
The Independent TD for South Tipperary, Seamus Healy, became something of a national figure when the Yes side overreacted to his suggestion that people should punish the Government for its latest fiscal restraint measures. He and his supporters won more publicity for their point that this is the only opportunity voters have of protesting against the cuts until the local and European elections in 2004, which are far less important than Nice anyway.
The latest Irish Times/MRBI poll showed the Yes side 12 points ahead when the survey was carried out early last week. It means that a swing of just over 6 per cent in the other direction would defeat the treaty.
Perhaps that has already happened with the Flood tribunal report. The challenge for the pro-Nice parties and organisations like the Alliance for Europe is to keep their majority and get their vote out.
It's no easy task. The Nice Treaty must be one of the most complex and least reader-friendly documents ever put to referendum. While there is undoubtedly a hunger for information among the public, the fact that the treaty contains so many disparate and obscure elements does not make it an easy sell.
The one issue which a very large number of voters can relate to is, regrettably, immigration. It did not surface to any significant extent in the first referendum, but in the words of one campaigner, "The genie is out of the bottle this time."
Ominously, the Irish Times/ MRBI poll found that 44 per cent of respondents believed the Nice Treaty would "encourage too much immigration" and the issue is reportedly very much alive on the ground in this referendum campaign.
Anti-immigrant sentiment, often expressed in crude racist language, is not confined to social groups which might have some reason to feel threatened by talk of an "influx" of immigrants competing for low-paid jobs: it is alive and well in the leafy suburbs also. And it won't go away after polling day on October 19th.
There has been a subtle change of approach by the Taoiseach in dealing with this issue. Whereas before Mr Ahern condemned elements on the No side for "shameful and distasteful" propaganda as well as "false and spurious claims", yesterday he merely pointed out: "We will have exactly the same rights as every other member-state in the matter of migration control".
This is a different tone from the famous Brian Cowen letter to his colleague, Tom Kitt, on March 14th, which spoke of giving "citizens of new EU member-states full and free access to live and work here from the first day of accession".
Campaigners on the No side say they have two major concerns. One is complacency among their activists: the other is the apparent success of the Yes campaign up to now in implanting fear in the public mind that inward investment will suffer if we say No to Nice.
While Fianna Fáil sources say their referendum canvass began in earnest over the weekend, this is queried by the No people, who maintain that the grassroots activists in Fianna Fáil will not be over-enthusiastic about knocking on doors at a time when perceived cutbacks and the name of Ray Burke are on people's lips.
The remarks by Education Minister Noel Dempsey about the possible restoration of college fees appear to have generated some unhelpful anxiety. In the current mood, rumours of cutbacks or harsh measures are gaining credence which have not apparently been considered at all by the Government, such as taxing the children's allowance and revising or abolishing the special savings scheme.
It was difficult not to feel sorry for Brian Cowen who ended up with a potentially poisoned chalice when he was given the job of directing Fianna Fáil's Nice campaign. Paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, to lose one referendum may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two would seem like carelessness. But the Teflon Taoiseach may escape some of the odium.
How to alter the "mood music" ahead of October 19th may be the real challenge of the referendum. Poll data suggest that dissatisfaction with the Government is inclining some voters to reject the treaty.
It is clear that a sizeable group of about one-third of the electorate have still to make up their minds. Pro-Nice campaigners insist that the more information people receive, the more likely they are to vote Yes. Anti-Nice activists claim many of the undecided are secret Yes voters.
There has been much breastbeating about the fact that "only" 16 per cent of those surveyed in the Irish Times/MRBI poll felt they understood the issues. But a diplomat from another EU member-state told me that if they got a result like that in his country, they would be doing handstands in delight.
Maybe we really are a sophisticated electorate.