Voters should "hold their fire" against Fianna Fáil in the Nice referendum because it would be wrong to delay or hinder European enlargement, the Labour Party leader, Mr Ruairí Quinn, has said.
At the Dublin news conference where Mr Quinn launched Labour's referendum campaign there was a placard with the the slogan, "Hold Your Fire, FF Can Wait, Europe Can't, Vote Yes, A Different Kind of Yes".
Flanked by his party's president, Mr Proinsias De Rossa, parliamentary delegate to the Convention on the Future of Europe, and former education minister Ms Niamh Bhreathnach, the Labour leader said Nice was a moral question. People should vote Yes "on the basis of ethics and morality".
Ireland, of all the existing member-states, should appreciate what the peoples of eastern and central Europe had gone through in their history.
He pointed to the additional clause in the current referendum which barred Irish participation in an EU mutual defence pact without a referendum.
Mr Quinn added: "This is a different question and we are looking for a different kind of Yes."
If the revised amendment was passed, neutrality would be kept under "a constitutional lock" and only the Irish people would possess the key.
Claiming credit for the additional clause, he said it emerged from "tough negotiations" with the Government. He pointed out that a European Union Bill, drafted by the Labour Party, would soon be passed into law.
It would lead to enhanced scrutiny of government decision-making in EU matters. "We know the people are angry, we know that Fianna Fáil lied to them.
"Don't vent your anger on Fianna Fáil by excluding the Poles and the Hungarians and the Czechs."
That could wait until the local and European elections in 2004.
Labour would be spending "something in the order of €25,000".
When it was pointed out that the No to Nice Campaign was spending four times as much, Mr Quinn commented: "They obviously have more money than we have."
He said that "a crowd of liars" in the Government had been guilty of "duplicity and deception". It was unfortunate that one of the protagonists in the referendum was "a discredited government".
He quoted the former Labour minister, Mr Liam Kavanagh's remark that, "At the end of the day, all referendums become a verdict on the government."
Mr Quinn acknowledged he was "on record as saying that the treaty is not a great treaty" but at the end of the day one had to make a choice. Most of the candidate countries had "very fragile democracies and economies". Mr De Rossa said the report of the Convention on the Future of Europe would be issued next year and a Yes vote would allow the candidate countries to play their full part in shaping the future of the European Union.
Ms Bhreathnach urged women voters to remember that they had "benefited enormously" from Ireland's EU membership and she asked Irish women to "put out the hand of friendship to the women in Eastern Europe".