Dublin MEP Patricia McKenna gathers more enemies with each referendum. Originally merely the Eurocrats were furious as her wrath was directed towards European expansion and strengthening, then it was the governments of the last four years - and now it is all the political parties.
Strictly, of course, it is the Supreme Court's deliverance of the McKenna judgment in 1995 which is causing the fury, but it is the MEP herself who started the ball rolling and the contentious legislation does bear her name.
The McKenna judgment means a government must now allot equal funds to both sides in a referendum. The dilemma first arose, much to their amazement, when FG/Labour were advocating divorce in 1995. A week before polling the coalition was forced to quit spending. In the subsequent referendums on bail and on Cabinet confidentiality the opposing sides were funded equally and most of the electorate had no idea what to do.
Next month the Republic will hold referendums on the Amsterdam Treaty and on the Good Friday Agreement. The commission, under former Chief Justice, Thomas Finlay, is charged with giving both sides of the argument. They have already started on Amsterdam. But what, Quidnunc asks, will the commission and indeed the Government do about Northern Ireland? The Government can of course talk, which is free, but it can't spend money unequally. With practically all in Leinster House desperately in favour of the agreement which it is hoped will bring peace to the North, how can it fund a committee tasked with pointing out its flaws? Will it be forced to give equal money to anyone opposing the agreement?
Well, yes. The Commission will have to tell us that the Good Friday agreement is inexplicit on decommissioning, may never materalise if the unionists don't agree the North/South councils, that the checks and balances for the assembly are so complicated it may all prove unworkable, that abstentionists may surface and that extremists on both sides may bomb it all out of existence. Others, as well as the commission, will be given money to say this. Having no written Constitution, the British government is bound by no such restraints and can stick to promoting the positive aspects.