Canvassing on the Nice Treaty is one lonely, head-banging trudge, especially for people who know their stuff and are anxious to communicate it. Kathy Sheridan braves the dark, wet streets with canvassers for both sides.
'All 'respectable' Ireland is on the side of Yes," says Sinn Féin's Seán Crowe to a working man on a dark, wet Tallaght doorstep. "Respectable in inverted commas," he adds helpfully, for the benefit of The Irish Times woman.
Or, in the words of an (anonymous) observer: "Only three types are voting No: the Shinners, the SPUC-ers and the Snots." For which read Sinn Féin, anti-abortion fundamentalists and the Greens. Or, as Bertie Ahern might put it: "A ragbag . . ."
So is it a class war? It's an entertaining theory. Rather like the one that people are not only able, but willing, to separate domestic politics from Nice. Or that Fianna Fáilers are the only ones putting their backs into the Nice campaign. "Not even - whisper it - the PDs," whispers a minister.
FF's efforts have been "lifted to the level of a general election campaign", said Martin Cullen on Tuesday.
But the image of thousands of wiry FF men banging frantically on doors to explain the Seville Declaration was tempered by Brian Lenihan's laconic revelation that "my technique has been to mingle around my constituency . . ." The Irish Times requested a look - only a quick one, mind, confidentiality assured - at FF's referendum engine-room in Pembroke Street but the party that is panting to say Yes returned a swift and resolute No.
Anyway, how are the troops responding on the ground? A straw poll of politicians of all shades reveals a certain, common sheepishness: "Well, eh, you couldn't expect a general election-type turn-out . . . could you?"
"It's always the same for presidential and European elections and referenda," says Bronwen Maher, the Greens' woman in Dublin North-Central. "Your cousins and friends will mobilise for you in a general election but not for something like this. It just doesn't happen."
And so, as nobody is prepared to admit out loud, Nice Treaty canvassing is one lonely, head-banging trudge, especially for people who know their stuff and are anxious to communicate it. For a sense of the challenge for both sides, compare and contrast the canvassers' guides for Fianna Fáil and the No to Nice Campaign (aka Youth Defence and allies, led by Justin Barrett).
Fianna Fáil's guide is a deeply unattractive booklet, 10 closely-printed pages of 22 "Key Questions", of which only eight or so can elicit a definite Yes or No reply from the canvasser. The other answers are multi-layered and long. Very long. The complexity of the issues requires that canvassers should be committed and canvassees relaxed. Unhappily, most doorsteps are wet and dark, Coronation Street is on and your typical voter drags himself to the door with a mad dog or baby straining at the leash.
The trick then, is to be on the succinct (for which read simplistic, say the Yes people) side of the debate. The No to Nice guide is the size of a calling card and fits into a top pocket. One side lists five "points to mention":
Nice is bad for democracy in Europe. Ireland, with the other smaller countries, will lose our voting power, our permanent commissioner and our veto in 30 vital areas.
Enlargement will go ahead without Nice and the new states will get a better deal when they join.
Nice will allow the bigger states to tell Ireland how much money to give to EU funds and when.
Nice will force us to join a European Army.
We have already said No.
That's it. While the Yes side goes apoplectic on seeing crucial and complicated issues reduced to scary sound-bites, the No to Nice people simply refine them further, put them on red and black posters and flood the country with them.
The other side of the card is reserved for canvassing manners: spend no more than five minutes at any door, be polite and friendly, don't smoke, leave the gate as you found it, never canvass later than 9 p.m. The last line is a cheery "Good Luck".
As a canvasser, all things being equal, which side would you rather be on? As a canvassee, after a long day's work, not given to 100 per cent trust in any politician, naturally suspicious of evasion and long-winded answers, and looking for a straight yes or no to any question, which side would you prefer to open the door to?
When the personable junior minister, Tom Kitt, hit a Ballinteer shopping centre in Dublin South, a middle-aged woman promptly sat down and wrote a five-point response to his leaflet, concluding that "the only people who benefit are capitalists". Made redundant after 25 years in a clerical job, she is unable to get another one, she says, because "all the foreigners have the jobs".
What do you say? The No canvasser will simply nod agreement (some less vigorously than others, to be fair). A Yes canvasser, if motivated, must launch into statistics while striving to separate the asylum-seeker issue from the 70 million economic migrants who some on the No side claim are headed straight for us.
This is one of the only two constituencies to vote Yes last time out, and Kitt's canvassing surveys, he admits, are perplexing. One affluent area yielded only a 52 per cent Yes; a less affluent one seemed to indicate a 62 per cent Yes.
A woman greets the minister warmly: "I'm a Yes. Other countries are entitled to their chance," before whispering, "the other thing is that you people have to clean up your own house". Kitt looks rueful.
"Convince me, I'm confused," demands another woman. He talks about "giving other countries the same chance as we had" and mentions the extra 100 million consumers, creating new markets and new jobs.
Retired company director Aidan O'Connor, one of Kitt's canvassers, has been hearing concerns about children "being dragged into wars and about people coming over, taking our jobs". There is a protest element, he says emphatically. "There's no doubt about it, people are confusing the issues of cutbacks and Ray Burke with Nice. Fianna Fáil is getting it in the ear this time. There's no way they can run away from it."
Out in Newbridge, Co Kildare, the heartland of Fianna Fáil TD Seán Power, the Undecideds and the Disaffecteds rule, on the evidence of this short canvass. Power does his best, pointing out to one woman that enlargement means more trade: "Since Spain joined, our trade with them went up 10-fold," he says. The woman replies: "But we gave away our fishing to Spain and they over-fished our grounds and left us with . . . what ?" He manfully concedes that that was indeed a "great mistake". But her main concern is an old refrain by now for anyone on the canvass: "I think it's just all gone far enough . . . I'm really worried about being buried in a huge conglomerate of EU rules and regulations."
It's not that she wants to keep others out, she insists, but . . . Another recurring theme.
Another woman is unable to separate domestic politics from Nice: "I admit it. I've lost the plot completely," she says, throwing her hands up. "I can't believe that they want to bring back university fees. I can't believe what the euro has done to prices. I look at immigrants around here and they seen so comfortable compared to some of our own . . . "
In Dublin North-Central, Bronwen Maher, of the Greens, knocks on the doors of houses that might once have belonged to "country" people of modest income. Now, upwardly-mobile, middle-class couples are taking over and serious money is being poured into interiors. They shatter the "class war" theory in a stroke. On our side of the road, the response from 15 houses is 10 Nos, one Yes, and three Undecideds.
"I don't like being coerced."
"I don't want things to change. We've already voted." "My \ colleagues are all voting No. I think it's about giving Bertie a kick up the arse for making them vote again."
"I don't mind enlargement, but you wouldn't know what they'd unload on us."
"I think we've been hoodwinked. But the reason I'm a No is that I don't like losing the veto."
"I feel we've gone far enough . . . I'd prefer a loose affiliation instead of all this copper- fastening, making rules about this straight banana and that crooked cucumber."
And the reason behind the single definite Yes? "It's better than voting No."
Oddly, the response to the two Greens canvassing the other side is evenly divided.
"Among the Nos, the neutrality thing kept coming up," says one.
And though Ciaran Toland of the Ireland for Europe group is convinced that the momentum is all on the Yes side, Sinn Féin's Sean Crowe says it is definitely with the Nos. In Tallaght, where domestic and European politics seem pretty inseparable, 10 houses produce eight Nos and two Undecideds. "I voted No last time and I'll be No again because things have only got worse. We're being ripped off everywhere."
"Trust nobody," says one darkly. "I'm a No. Because of the veto and because of Bertie. D'you really think he didn't know about Burke?"
"I'd be worried about neutrality and being pulled into a European superpower. I'll be a No again because of the way the Government is going."
"I voted No before because I didn't want to open up to Europe, to other immigrants. And they're going to privatise all the big companies."
"Why do we need a second referendum?"
"Give me a quick read. What's it all about?"
A man with a No attitude and a list of grievances, winds up with the prediction: "I suppose they'll put another bloody referendum up to us if we vote No again."
"Might it go to penos?" quips Crowe. The North is never mentioned.
Meanwhile, back at Life House, the headquarters of No to Nice ("rented" from Youth Defence), the ground floor is shuttered. But inside, the place is bursting with activity as the latest red-and-black posters are loaded into waiting transport, ready to flood 38 out of 42 constituencies. "No More Shady Deals. Don't Trust them on Nice. Vote No", they read. Controversial associations on the part of its own public face, Justin Barrett, have emerged as the week progressed. The organisation that began the week complaining that no journalists turned up at its press conference ended it by getting massive amounts of coverage, if not the kind it hankers after.
The irony is that while many of its opponents object seriously to its tactics, in this wan, lacklustre campaign, there isn't one that doesn't covet the fierce energy and commitment of its activists.