Catherine Reilly continues her coverage of the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. You can read the rest of the series here, here,here, here, here, here, here and here.
Catherine Reilly (Dublin, Metro Éireann): Let me preface this post by saying that I am notorious for my predictions – a sad fact that I neglected to mention in my previous entry. From high-profile murder trials to important and not-so-important football matches, I make the wrong call time and time again (though I did correctly predict a fall in Ireland’s house prices some time ago – golden star for me, misery for thousands of homeowners).
Anyway, to labour the point, I’m not a betting woman, unlike our former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
Now it looks like I’ve completely called it wrong again when I predicted in yesterday’s entry that Ireland’s undecided voters would vote Yes. It seems that being told what to do, in relation to something you don’t understand, just hasn’t washed with Ireland’s voting public (or the half that bothered to vote). This became clear last night at the voting booths, which saw a late surge in my locality, and was further apparent during Mark Mardell’s unintentionally amusing report from Dublin during last night’s BBC One news. He said one woman told him that she had still not made up her mind as she stood at the voting booth, her pencil ‘hovering over the ballot paper’. Another person told Mardell they ‘hadn’t got a clue’ what the treaty was all about. Fair play to Mardell, he caught the mood superbly during his unintentionally hilarious report.
I really believed that fear would push undecided voters to vote a particular way – but it seems that complete puzzlement and an old fashioned Irish resistance to being told what to do, has won out. People are going on about the high working class No vote, but prior to voting, I caught the opinion of people of a variety of backgrounds, and it was diverse. It is difficult to pinpoint why people voted as they did. Confusion? The economy? A loss of faith in politicians? Lack of relationship with EU structures? Immigration? Maybe a touch of all of the above, although I am unsure about the proportionality.
This is a truly crushing blow for Ireland’s recently installed Taoiseach Brian Cowen, as it is for all those who have spent painstaking hours negotiating the Lisbon Treaty. But I don’t believe Europe can afford to dwell on the negatives of this result. With the gap between Eurocrats and ordinary European citizens as wide as it is, it is only a wonder that it has taken this long for the powers-that-be to receive such an almighty slap in the face.
For comedy value, it’s pretty good.
