The possibility of apathy and incomprehension defeating the ratification of the Amsterdam Treaty has pushed the Government into a referendum campaign funding fudge that is likely to produce a most bizarre campaign. Whether the public will be any the wiser or be more enthusiastic participants in the process at the end must be seriously in doubt.

Hog-tied by the McKenna judgment ban on the partisan funding of referendum campaigns, the Government has decided to seek the services of an independent commission to make the case for and against Amsterdam to the Irish people. It will have some £2.5 million to fund the printing and distribution of its arguments and any advertising it deems necessary.

What the Government will not do is fund any of those actively involved in the campaign on either side of the argument, although the commission is bound to reflect their views "fairly". If it organises public meetings it will be required to invite speakers from both sides. The dilemma posed by the McKenna case has been seriously exacerbated by the evidence of public confusion and apathy in the cabinet confidentiality referendum last year.

The decision by the Government then to publish full-page advertisements in the newspapers based on two statements written by senior counsel arguing each side of the case may have honoured the principle of the McKenna decision but was woefully inadequate in engaging the public in an informed debate.

As an option for the Amsterdam referendum, one would have thought it was clearly ruled out by the complexity and variety of the treaty's provisions and the variety of arguments likely to be made on all sides.

Not so, it appears.

Yet how will such a commission reconcile the internationalist, anti-capitalist thrust of Joe Higgins's opposition to the treaty with Anthony Coughlan's defence of the nation state? Or the latter's opposition to the extension of EU competences with the Green demands for more environmental legislation?

How will the commission resolve issues of fact? Will it, for example, put out material saying that the treaty's provisions embroil Ireland in a nuclear alliance, an interpretation hotly contested by the Government. Responding recently to the case for direct State aid to parties and groups campaigning in the referendum, a senior diplomat told this correspondent bluntly: "You can't give them public money, they don't tell the whole story."

Not, of course, that all politicians are not sometimes guilty of the same offence. But the public, it seems, must be protected from the views of unrepresentative fringe groups.

That hostility to publicly funding campaigns is certainly not unrelated to the prospect in the near future of a referendum on a settlement for the North. In such a poll Sinn Fein might well seek public funding for a No campaign.

But is the public not yet to be trusted to distinguish between the bogus and the genuine? Must we really rely on a debate whose arguments are filtered and polished up by a commission of worthies, no matter how distinguished? The alternative? That practised by such mature democracies as Denmark, Sweden and Australia, whose systems have not come crashing down because anti-establishment parties receive funding during referendums.

While the Danish government will spend some £500,000 printing and distributing purely factual material for its treaty referendum, it has set aside a separate fund of £2.8 million for campaigners.

Half of this will be distributed to parties and groups through a formula that recognises both the need to reflect a party's electoral base and the principle that minorities need special help.

Of this £1.4 million, half is allocated equally among all registered political parties and the three EU-focused campaign groups, while the balance is distributed among the same groups but in proportion to their electoral support.

The system is overseen by an independent and widely respected committee which has the right to distribute the other £1.4 million to applicants promoting specific projects, whether meetings, pamphlets or publicity. This allows those outside the mainstream political process, or in minorities within the parties, access to funds.

Would such a system be allowed in Ireland?

The key test for all the judges who found for McKenna was that of "equality", that citizens on one side of the argument should not be favoured against their equals on the other.

It is also arguable that the principle of equality of citizens cannot be taken to mean 50-50 funding for each side of a campaign when one side has clearly far greater electoral support and greater support on the issue. In that case a member of the majority could logically argue that the minority case was now being unduly favoured, in breach of the equality principle.

Clearly if the Government accepted the principle that it should assist the debate by directly funding both sides of the argument in order to avoid another successful legal challenge, it would have to establish an impartial mechanism for distributing funds on a weighted basis which takes account both of the need to assist minorities and to reflect the real balance of forces in an argument.

If the Irish courts, as it appears clear from a detailed reading of the McKenna judgment, are not so much concerned with the spending as such as with the bias of the State, then it is arguable that such a system would be likely to be upheld.

Surely the best test of an argument is how it stands up in the cut and thrust of public debate. That, indeed, is why, despite its imperfections, we prefer democracy to totalitarianism. In the end it is more efficient and why we should take the risk of directly funding the participants in the debate, no matter how uncomfortable it may make us feel at times.

The Government's approach to the referendum reflects a paternalism and a caution reminiscent of another age. Is this really the confident new Ireland?