Each day since the referendum on the Treaty of Nice, the vacuum that was passed off for Government policy on Europe, becomes more evident. On polling day, the electorate was invited to endorse what was purportedly the view of a united administration. It now seems that Mr Ahern leads a rag-tag-and-bobtail of opinion, advised by an Attorney General who fears that the end towards which the Government has been supposedly leading the people is, in reality, a democratic black hole.
The Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, went to Gothenburg to assure their EU partners that Ireland was not against enlargement and that the Nice Treaty would be endorsed in due course. Then, quixotically, the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, lauded the electorate for rejecting the treaty, invoking the dissenting spirit of his own student past. ("That's just Charlie", his Cabinet colleague, Mr Dermot Ahern, explained on Questions and Answers). Junior Minister, Mr Eamon O Cuiv, campaigned for one result but voted for another. Are not these all members of the same Government that signed its support to the Nice Treaty only a few short months ago?
They had some nerve and some cheek, asking the electorate to vote Yes to Nice against a background of deep disunity and disarray in their own ranks. And the Attorney General, Mr Michael McDowell, leaves himself in an invidious position in his comments delivered on Monday evening. Many of the criticisms which he made are valid. But every one of the deficiencies which he cites in the State's interface with Europe, are within the remedy of the Government to which he is the chief law officer. Either he has been mute on these issues in the Cabinet room or the Government is not listening to him. Either way, it hardly suggests that there is much of meaningful dialogue or shared vision when the Taoiseach sits down with his ministers and advisers to discuss Ireland's relations with mainland Europe.
In an article in this newspaper in the run up to the referendum, Mr John Rogers, SC, a former attorney general, drew attention to failures within this jurisdiction to scrutinise properly our interaction with Europe and to make our representatives in the European institutions properly accountable at national level. For this, and for other reasons, he declared that he would vote No to Nice. Some of Mr Rogers's concerns found an echo in Mr McDowell's speech on Monday.
Mr Rogers is not in Government. But the newly emerging Eurosceptics of Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats are. The time surely for them to have raised doubts and objections was in the run-up to Nice. The Taoiseach, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs should have kept their pens in their pockets and refused to sign up if what they were bringing home to the Irish people was not going to have the full support of the most senior members of the Cabinet before ever it could be put to the people. That they should misjudge the electorate, might be forgivable. That they cannot secure the backing of their colleagues in Government is risible.
The Treaty of Nice was a compromise among many contending States and interests. It involved give and take among all the signatories, big and small. Its genius lies within its very complexity. It is self-serving nonsense for politicians to plead that they are for enlargement but against this aspect or another of what comes with it. The Treaty is not a self-service restaurant in which one may pick and choose what one likes - and nobody knows this better than senior ministers with long experience of European negotiations.