The result was decisive, but even the Yes campaigners in the Nice Treaty referendum know that their victory was far from a ringing endorsement, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Reporter
If the Nice Treaty referendum had been defeated, the EU's enlargement ambitions would have been thrown into crisis and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's leadership of Fianna Fáil left in doubt. In the end, however, the majority of the Irish public was swayed by the high-profile Yes campaign, job worries, appeals to their conscience and a fear that the Republic would be portrayed as the ingrate of Europe.
They were persuaded also by the energetic pro-Nice campaign of a former taoiseach, who, despite his 75 years, managed, unlike so many others, to put passion into the cause of the EU. That man was Dr Garret FitzGerald.
When the 62.89 per cent Yes vote was announced in Dublin Castle on Sunday, October 20th, the expressions of the Taoiseach, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen, and the Minister of State for Europe, Dick Roche, showed relief. The No camp looked on glumly. For weeks, people such as the Green Party TD, John Gormley, had believed that the No side could not win, even as he went out to rally support for his cause.
Few others in the world of politics, or outside it, were so certain of the outcome early on. The No camp had put its campaign into action in the early summer. The Government's efforts, in contrast, looked sluggish. During the campaign, polls doggedly reported that 40 per cent of the public were inclined to vote Yes, a little more than a quarter were set on voting No, while one-third were don't knows. The key was going to be the turnout.
Though they denied it later, two of the leading No campaigners, Justin Barrett of the No to Nice campaign and Anthony Coughlan of the National Platform, played the immigration card in early summer campaigning. The Government's decision to let citizens from candidate countries work here without work permits immediately after enlargement meant that thousands would soon head for Ireland, they claimed.
Though also seeking a No vote, the Green Party and Sinn Féin, along with the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, attempted to distance themselves from the Barrett/Coughlan axis.
Recognising that immigration was being quietly raised on the doorsteps, Brian Cowen changed the Government's tune. The workers mentioned above would still require work permits post-enlargement, it now said.
Faced with stinging criticism of their conduct, much of it from Dick Roche, Barrett and Coughlan similarly shuffled their cards and left immigration behind. Instead, the duo now castigated the Government for offering the candidate countries a bum membership deal, particularly on agriculture, even as Barrett's group told farmers that enlargement would wreck the Common Agricultural Policy.
Despite initial doubts about their actions, the Government managed to neutralise fears that Nice endangered Irish neutrality by getting the agreement of all other EU member states to the Seville Declaration. In this, the others guaranteed that the treaty posed no threat, while the Government said a referendum would have to be held before Ireland could join a mutual defence agreement.
The Government also moved to improve Oireachtas scrutiny of EU legislation. Under the Fine Gael TD, Gay Mitchell, the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs is proving to be the quiet star of the 29th Dáil.
Justin Barrett's value to the No campaign was finally destroyed after The Irish Times conclusively proved he had attended meetings of the German extreme-right National Democratic Party. Despite Barrett's insistence that he had not known much about the group beforehand, a videotape of one of the party's meetings secured by The Irish Times showed that its political leanings could not have been in doubt.
However, the complaints from the No side that it had been financially outgunned by the Yes campaign were justified, though the claim that it was by a ratio of 20 to one gilded the lily considerably.
The Irish Business and Employers' Confederation threw €500,000 behind the campaign, while more came from the International Financial Services Centre. Fianna Fáil itself spent €500,000, compared with €60,000 on the first Nice referendum.
Humbly accepting that it had slept on its watch during the first referendum, Fianna Fáil did get its grassroots machine activated, though its performance was still a far cry from the standard reached in general elections.
Though Fine Gael held a nationwide series of meetings under the soft-focused title, "Europe, Let's Talk About It", the party's newly-elected leader, Enda Kenny, failed to impose his identity on the electorate. Instead, the mantle of leadership fell on Garret FitzGerald, who campaigned energetically on the streets and outside football grounds. "He was our secret weapon," acknowledged one Yes campaigner.
Another former Fine Gael leader and taoiseach, John Bruton, who now sits on the Convention on the Future of Europe, was equally high-profile as the party's director of elections.
Faced with the result, psephologists tucked in to detail and speculation. Did it prove that the first Nice result was an aberration? Was the Republic safely back in the pro-EU camp? Was there a deeper lesson for the future held within the columns of figures? Despite all the campaigning, the Yes campaign had managed to convince few No voters to change sides. Instead, it had simply outnumbered them by enticing previous non-voters back into the polling stations.
Quickly, politicians and others pointed to poll figures showing that 64 per cent of the public felt confident about their understanding of EU matters in the days before the vote.
Preening as they said it, the Yes camp said such figures proved that the Republic now had the best-educated population on matters European. Frankly, this claim is nonsense.
The majority did not vote Yes because they were convinced that the Nice Treaty offered the best path to the future. Instead, they said: "Right, we are not sure. But we'll trust you one more time."
The Government has since said, rightly, that its colleagues in other European capitals would be less vaulting in their ambitions if they had to "sell" the resulting treaties to their voters in referendums.
However, the performance of many involved in the Convention on the Future of Europe, where defence, tax harmonisation and justice sovereignty changes are now being seriously raised, has shown that few lessons have been learned.