Campaigners against the Amsterdam Treaty have hailed the 38 per cent No vote as proof of popular mistrust of political leaders and support for Irish neutrality.
The secretary of the National Platform, Mr Anthony Coughlan, said yesterday the result should make the pro-EU lobby realise that the State's "honeymoon with the European Union is coming to an end".
"Everything that happens henceforth - the Republic's disastrous decision to join the European single currency next year, the diminution of EU structural funds, the imposition of budget controls by Brussels inside EMU, the abolition of duty-free shopping next year - should make the Irish people more and more disillusioned with the centralised EU state-building project, and more anxious to win back their national democracy and independence and control of their own affairs."
The chairman of one of the main anti-Amsterdam groups, the Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA), said he was disappointed at the outcome but pleased that the No vote was high.
According to Mr Roger Cole, "while PANA helped to make the issue of Irish neutrality and the steady transformation of the EU into a nuclear armed federal state the central issue of the referendum campaign, the fact that those advocating a Yes vote kept saying it did not affect neutrality or that it `copper-fastened' our neutrality caused great confusion.
"In a sense, therefore, all the people, whether they voted Yes or No, voted in favour of maintaining Irish neutrality, which is the central objective of PANA."
He said the treaty had committed Ireland to the progressive framing of a common defence policy.
He remained unconvinced, he said, that this could be done together with nuclear armed states in a way that would maintain Irish neutrality.
The Socialist Party TD, Mr Joe Higgins, said the result was "a huge rebuff for the establishment political parties which ganged up to stampede the people in the South into agreeing a very complex treaty which they had not even the opportunity to read before voting on".
Green Party MEP Ms Nuala Ahern welcomed the large No vote.
"This is the biggest number of people to indicate their dissatisfaction with the direction in which the main political parties are taking Europe," she said. "Unless they seriously move to rectify these fault lines they will throw out the baby with the bath water.
"More and more people are fed up with the secrecy and lack of accountability in Europe, the control by big business and the lack of jobs and are now starting to make their voices heard."
The Workers' Party claimed the Amsterdam Treaty would have been defeated "had it been put to the people in an honest manner without being trailed in on the coat-tails of the Northern Ireland agreement".
The Workers' Party spokeswoman on the treaty, Ms Anne Finnegan, said the high No vote showed there was great unease among voters about the treaty.
The Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament also welcomed the strong No vote, saying the result reaffirmed the public desire to maintain neutrality.
"The Amsterdam Treaty fails completely to express the Irish people's rejection of nuclear weapons and support for neutrality," according to Irish CND chairman Mr Billy Fitzpatrick.
Dick Grogan adds from Waterford: The tiny Gaeltacht parish of Ring, near Dungarvan, made a strongly individualistic statement by recording a clear majority vote against the Amsterdam Treaty - emulating its rejection of the Maastricht Treaty over a decade ago.