Opinion John Waters'There is very little racism in Ireland ... There is, yes, some public concern about the drift of public policy on immigration and asylum seekers, but this is mainly down to fear of the unknown, and will not translate into support for the change ... The referendum will be roundly defeated, and the reasons should be obvious to anyone who has lived here for more than a year or two."
That's what I wrote about the citizenship referendum less than two months ago. I concluded: "The amendment, if it goes ahead at all, will be defeated three to one." If there was, as I once proposed, a league table for political forecasters, I would now be in the relegation zone. I could hardly have been more wrong on the result. But was I wrong, too, about the reasons behind it? Frankly, it doesn't matter how we intended it - it reads as a clear statement of unwelcome for those who come here in search of a better life.
Racism is just a word, one that has been grossly misused in a manner that has closed down the kind of discussion we needed to avoid precisely what has now occurred. Until last Friday, we were entitled to plead innocent to charges of xenophobia, but this result has given a concrete reality to what previously was no more than a ragbag of unaddressed sentiments. Now we can be presumed guilty until we prove ourselves innocent.
This amendment was, in political terms, so skilfully couched that it provided for deniability in respect of the motivation for supporting it. The genius of its construction was that it allowed its sponsors and supporters to plead that the issue was merely a little technocratic housekeeping in relation to a citizenship loophole. In reality, it was a divining rod in search of a malign political sentiment as destructive to those who harbour it as those against whom it is directed.
Over the course of the campaign, I wrote several columns opposing the amendment from a variety of perspectives - technical, ethical and political. Last week I met a man who told me: "You're missing the point. This is about keeping the niggers out." If he was right, we have many serious matters to consider.
For more than a generation, we've been engaged in a process described by its political sponsors as "modernisation". It included not merely economic development and changes in social mores, but, more fundamentally, an opening up to the wider world of European integration and transnational industrialisation.
This was always going to be a process of give and take. Unfortunately, the sponsors tended to emphasise the "take" aspects and dismiss questions about the "give" dimension as insularity or backwardness. The result is that the Irish people came to believe in the free lunch, and have lately become outraged to find themselves presented with a bill.
The relatively sudden transformation of Irish streets into minor melting pots, in which a multiplicity of skin colours and tongues has made manifest the reality of what "modernisation" actually means has greatly discomfited a large segment of the Irish public. It appears, moreover, that little distinction is being made between those who come to Ireland as economic migrants from what are now our partner states in the EU and those who come from outside as immigrants or asylum-seekers.
The subtext of this amendment was that we can have the bullfight and the bull home, that we can participate in the economic and cultural benefits of the world and not give anything back. In terms of the reality of where we are, the statement we have made is as useful as standing on Streedagh strand instructing the Atlantic to turn back.
In this there has been a monstrous abdication of leadership, of the responsibility to tell us that keeping the crock of gold meant honouring the rainbow. The same politicians who sold us, slice by slice, the salami of multinational dependency now seek to exploit the residual sentiment relating to a version of national autonomy they knew was being sold down the river.
There will be many collateral consequences of Friday's vote, not all of them bad.
One is that we can reasonably expect not to have to endure any more preaching from Michael McDowell about pluralism and inclusiveness.
Another is that the Catholic clergy must delve into its collective imagination in search of new material for Christmas sermons, the standard lecture about the wickedness of the innkeeper who turned away the Holy Family having been rendered redundant by the disgraceful fence-sitting of the Catholic hierarchy in this campaign.
A third is that Ireland can hope never again to become poor and have to send its children out into the world in search of livelihoods or opportunities.
Certainly, we have provided ourselves with a massive incentive to ensure such a fate never again befalls us. For now we have established a benchmark for the way we can expect our children to be treated if it does.