They are stripping Dublin’s tall and elegant lamp-posts of the YES and NO placards that climbed in batches of up to five more than halfway up each post. But before Ireland’s Lisbon referendum sinks into history along with the placards, it is perhaps worth considering what made it important other than as a test of David Cameron’s ability to avoid trouble and the Czech president’s resolve.
The resounding NO vote in the first referendum tends to be written off as the result of the complacency of the Fine Fail-Green coalition government and the other main parties. If we are for it, ‘our’ voters will be too. But that is only half the story. Irish voters were not ‘theirs’, and they were moved in July 2008 by two genuine issues – pre-eminently the re-balancing of power under Lisbon between large and small member states and less certainly, the market imperative in EU affairs.
On a number count, of course, the re-organising of voting power and re-shaping of the Commission to reflect population size was a democratic re-adjustment. But democracy is also about securing the voice and security of minorities – in the case of the EU, the smaller member states. For Irish voters, the loss of Ireland’s own Commissioner and Germany’s greater voting power under the Lisbon treaty was symbolic of the country’s loss of voice and power in the EU. The compromise that Ireland won over its Commissioner in the post-referendum negotiations was a vital component of the two to one majority for Lisbon last Saturday.
But more than that fear was the prime motive this time round. Ireland’s economy is in deep trouble, just how deep the government revealed on referendum day by releasing details of a disastrous fall in tax revenues which will make a savage budget in December inevitable. The unemployment rate has soared since July 2008 and now stands at 11.5 per cent; by December nearly half a million people will be out of work. For most people – many of whom openly fear for their jobs - turning their back on an European Union that had made the halcyon days of the Celtic Tiger possible was unimaginable - especially under an incompetent and corrupt government that has made the economic crisis worse with a foolish tax-raising budget.
Curiously, the corruption of their office-holders does not seem to have anywhere near the impact that the expenses scandal has had in the UK, even though it is far more spectacular. Bertie Ahern, the disgraced Taoiseach, has even brought out his memoirs. John O’Donoghue, the Ceann Comhairle (or Speaker), has taken up the baton with extravagant spending as Arts Minister and in his new post, earning the tabloid sobriquet ‘Johnny Cash’. Observers expect even more damaging revelations as the media make use of Ireland’s freedom of information laws, to obtain yet more details of his (and his wife’s) exploits on expenses. How damaging will they prove? The Irish seem to be resigned to a ruling class that has shamelessly, arrogantly even, exploited the fruits of office during Ireland’s buoyant past. But will they accept the same behaviour in the midst of recession? And will the Greens really hang on in there?
