Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are expected to spend close to €1 million between them in their campaigns urging support for the Lisbon Treaty, The Irish Timeshas learned.
Senior figures in both parties yesterday confirmed they will allot substantial six-figure sums to finance vigorous nationwide campaigns advocating a Yes vote.
Fine Gael, which yesterday announced that Dublin-based MEP Gay Mitchell will be its director of elections for the campaign, has already allotted a budget well in excess of €250,000, according to senior sources in the party.
And while Fianna Fáil has yet to unveil its strategy, it is also expected to announce big spending plans. A senior source in the party yesterday said its campaign would be better resourced than for the second Nice referendum in October 2002. That campaign cost the party more than €500,000.
Fine Gael's campaign team, comprised of senior TDs and its five MEPs, held its first meeting yesterday. Mr Mitchell said: "Fine Gael intends running a positive, energetic and successful campaign to secure a Yes vote in this hugely important referendum on the reform treaty.
"We will be campaigning in a manner similar to a general election, with a strong multimedia campaign, posters, public meetings, tours and promotional literature all supporting a Yes vote."
The spending plans of the two major parties emerged on the day the lobby group leading the campaign against the Lisbon Treaty announced it would spend over €100,000 distributing a pamphlet to every home in the country.
Libertas yesterday said it would distribute the leaflet to 1.34 million homes throughout the country, urging voters to vote No in the referendum which will be held later this year.
Declan Ganley, president of the group, also promised that the No campaign would be "the best resourced No campaign in living memory". The Galway-based businessman was speaking at a photocall outside Government Buildings on Merrion Street, where he publicly binned or "recycled" a copy of the Green Party's manifesto for last year's general election.
In a direct attack on the party for what he claimed was its U-turn on Europe, Mr Ganley said Minister for the Environment John Gormley and the Government had failed in their duty to provide balanced information to citizens on the treaty.
Mr Ganley berated Mr Gormley's decision not to distribute an information leaflet to every home setting out the Yes and No cases, as has been done by the Referendum Commission in the past.
"We are forced to announce this leaflet today because this Government is so afraid of the arguments against this treaty that they won't spend State money to inform people in an unbiased manner," he said.
But the Green Party leader later flatly rejected Mr Ganley's claims that he had sold out or made a U-turn on Europe. "This is nonsense. This is a right-wing group called Libertas," he said.
Mr Gormley told RTÉ that the party would consult all its members in a special convention.