OPINION/Garret Fitzgerald: When the initial referendum on EC accession was held in May 1972, it was preceded by a nationwide campaign that roused huge interest everywhere in the State. Even in places with small populations, hundreds turned up at meetings organised by local bodies to hear the case for and against accession being argued by people from the three main political parties and from what was then Official Sinn Féin.
Of course, that degree of interest could not be sustained during subsequent referendums. Nevertheless, up to and including that on the Amsterdam Treaty four years ago, public meetings were widely held throughout the State to discuss the issues.
Several of these meetings at which I myself spoke were in Dublin pubs, where 100-150 people sat and listened as they sipped their pints, and then raised issues that were bothering them. Another was a trade-union meeting where people were informally asked for their view on the forthcoming referendum as they entered and also as they left: it was interesting that, having heard both sides of the case, one-quarter of those present switched from opposition to support for that treaty.
On yet another occasion I stood on the footpath in Rathmines for 2½ hours, arguing the case for the treaty in question, as an ever-changing crowd plied me with questions.
Last May and June there seem to have been few, if any, such meetings. Moreover, from the Government, only the Taoiseach and Minister for Foreign Affairs seemed actively engaged on this occasion. And the Opposition parties were also less active than previously. This inertia showed in the result, a turnout of only 35 per cent. The failure of so many TDs to engage with the issues is disturbing, more especially in view of the fact that almost half of the members of the present Dáil hold or have held ministerial office, and well over one-quarter have had first-hand experience of meetings of the Council of Ministers in Brussels. How is it that in a referendum of such importance to Ireland and Europe, so many TDs with European experience were conspicuously silent?
I have to say that over the years I have formed a clear impression that, despite the fact that so many TDs have had direct experience of the working of the EU, many Ministers and most TDs are too unsure of their grasp of the issues to be willing to open themselves to questioning about European issues.
Nor is this modesty confined to matters concerning Europe. There is simply no Irish tradition of public meetings at which politicians subject themselves to questioning. However, some lessons seem to have been learnt from the Nice Treaty experience: for one thing, we now have the Forum on Europe.
I attended this body's last meeting before Christmas and was impressed by the way it operates, and by the quality of the evidence being offered by experts such as the French Minister for European Affairs and Prof Brigid Laffan of University College Dublin.
Those presenting their views at the sessions are subsequently questioned by members of the various political parties involved in the forum, and observers are also allowed to raise issues, after which each of them has a right of reply.
This is clearly a most useful and democratic procedure, which is providing material for reports to be made subsequently by the chairman of the Forum, Dr Maurice Hayes. If, when they are published, these reports are given adequate coverage by the media, they should offer a much more solid basis upon which the public can in due course make up its mind on the issues at stake.
I think that it is a pity that one major political party - Fine Gael - is not engaged in this forum process, and the fact that this is the party that has most consistently supported European integration must in some measure weaken the impact of the forum's deliberations.
On Monday the forum will launch in Waterford the first of a series of eight meetings to be held in various parts of the State, the last two in Tallaght and Ballymun on the 28th and 29th of this month.
Each of these meetings will be briefly addressed by a prominent politician who either supports or opposes ratification of the Nice Treaty, raising some of the issues that need to be addressed. Then politicians from all the parties - except Fine Gael - will listen to the views of the audience and will respond to any points that may be put to them.
These meetings will undoubtedly attract more attention from the media at local level than the first eight plenary forum meetings have received from the national media. Several of these eight meetings have not been covered by RTÉ television, and among the daily papers, apart from one meeting on agriculture held in Cork, the Examiner has printed only a couple of hundred words on one of seven plenary meetings in Dublin, while The Irish Independent has covered only half of these.
The Irish Times has covered all but one of these meetings, but even this paper of record has felt able to publish only 2.5 per cent of the proceedings of this body. Proceedings are available from www.forumoneurope.ie
While nothing can excuse the failure of the Government, and of the Opposition parties who support ratification, to mount a vigorous campaign last May and June, it has to be said that the media bear a good deal of responsibility for the low turnout seven months ago. The reporting of the issues at stake in the newspapers and on television and radio was fairly pathetic.
While points made by speakers for and against ratification were published, almost no attempt has been made to evaluate the actual merits of the arguments put forward; a role from which Irish newspapers seem to have opted out almost completely, and from which RTÉ seems to feel itself legally precluded.
On this as on other issues, national TV and radio clearly feel that the impartiality requirement imposed on them by legislation has to be fulfilled by presenting only the polarised views of, very often, the most extreme supporters of opposing viewpoints, with the interviewer putting contrary views to each.
In theory, while this procedure is designed to ensure that the viewer/listener hears both side, in practice it often tends to breed nothing but confusion and a sense of deadlock in relation to the issue being discussed.
This was also the effect of the approach that the Referendum Commission felt obliged to adopt. Producing advertisements that involved printing side by side directly opposite and mutually irreconcilable statements, only one of which (at most) could be true, was a recipe for public confusion, and merely contributed to mass abstention.
Changes in the role of the commission have since removed what it clearly saw as a legal obligation to act in this counterproductive way, so that we will be spared this hazard in future referendums.
It is to be hoped that in the year ahead the media will take their duties in this matter more seriously than they did in 2001, so that when the Nice ratification issue is revisited towards the end of this year, the public may be a good deal better informed than it was last June.