Like the mythological figure of Icarus, critics of the European Union believe it has flown too close to the sun. Just as the sun's rays melted the wings of Icarus and plunged him into the sea, so too, they say, the grand but artificial project for "ever closer union" has disintegrated under the heat of popular disapproval.
That was the conclusion the Eurosceptics drew from the result of last June's Nice referendum. No, no, say the integrationists, it was a very low turnout with a single-figure margin of victory. The sceptics respond by claiming a referendum in certain other member-states could have produced a bigger majority against Nice. The integrationists reply that, provided the issues were explained properly, most people would have the common sense to support the Treaty.
Thus, although the referendum may be six months behind us, the debate continues. The Treaty must be ratified by the end of 2002, which implies another referendum. This is expected after the general election, probably in the autumn, although no date has been announced and there are even some who believe that fears of a second defeat mean it will not take place and the EU will fudge its way through to the next phase. Former Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald has suggested that, since the problem last time was a low turn-out, why not have the vote the same day as the general election?
The Taoiseach says he favours a second referendum but that no formal decision has been made. Officially at time of writing the Government is waiting for the report from the Forum on Europe.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, said the Treaty was necessary for EU enlargement and failure to ratify it would impede and delay accession of the central and east European states. The sceptics say these countries have a basic right to join the EU, whether Nice is ratified or not.
The European Commission president, Mr Romano Prodi, has conceded that Nice is not legally required for enlargement but that it is politically necessary.
A typical response, even among neutral observers abroad, was: "What went wrong? We thought Ireland was doing well out of the EU. Aren't you becoming a modern European state and don't you like playing on a team in the Premier League? What have you got against the east Europeans anyway?"
It could be argued that the No side did not win the Nice referendum, the Yes campaign lost it. Indeed it is stretching things even to say there was a Yes campaign. Evidence of knocking on doors was limited. Even leaflets supporting a Yes vote were scarce.
The result was all the more astonishing for the fact that almost the entire establishment formally supported a Yes vote. Most of the Dβil parties, media chiefs, church leaders, trade union heads: the great and the good said Nice was a great and good thing. But like the "verbal republicans" the late John Healy wrote about, the "verbal Europeans" failed to put their money where their mouth was. In a climate where political fund-raising was under increasing scrutiny, the parties kept their hard-won shekels largely to themselves.
For the most part, our pro-EU leaders sat on their hands or ordered another bottle of Chablis and talked about their latest trip to Brussels for a committee meeting. Not so the hungry guerrilla army on the No side. What one observer calls the "Nyet Cong" (combining the soundalike Russian for "No" with Viet Cong) were fanning out across the countryside with their posters and leaflets, knocking on doors and highlighting the dangers, as they saw it, of deeper entanglement in Prodi's Web.
Certainties about our relationship with the EU had been undermined by the row between the Minister for Finance and the European Commission over budgetary policy. Mr McCreevy's cabinet colleague, Mary Harney, had already proclaimed that Ireland was spiritually closer to Boston than Berlin. At the very least, there seemed to be some static on the spiritual link-up with Brussels.
Cabinet ministers were out of tune with Brussels but some senior EU figures did not help either. To take only one example, the suggestion by Mr Prodi a week before polling that European institutions should be funded with revenue raised from EU citizens went down badly with a tax-averse Irish electorate.
The campaign spoke volumes about the state of public opinion on Europe but it also gave revealing insights into the Irish political system and the relationship between the political class and the voters.
Although an explanatory pamphlet was widely distributed by the Government, the Treaty itself was not. This was in contrast with the Belfast Agreement of 1998 which went to every household in the land. Copies of the Nice text were not very easily come by, unless you were proficient in the art of downloading documents from a computer. Admittedly the text was a complicated compendium of legal provisions written in dense Euro-jargon but Irish people don't like signing up for something they have not even been asked to read.
One of the more potent slogans of the anti-Nice people was, "If you don't know, vote No". Overcoming the knowledge deficit will be a major challenge in a second referendum. The No people claim the more people learn, the greater the opposition to Nice.
If the political class really believes in the Treaty, there will have to be a major educational effort to get the message across. At a minimum, copies of the text with explanatory notes will have to be universally available and the Euro-enthusiasts will need to make "hot gospel" visits to every village, town and housing estate.
In other words, a serious campaign will have to be mounted, not the half-hearted and limp affair from first time around.
At this juncture, it is frankly difficult to envisage the parties and civic groups - with a few exceptions - bestirring themselves sufficiently to get such a campaign going.
Much attention has been focused on the McKenna judgment, whereby the Supreme Court in 1995 outlawed the spending of State money to promote one side or the other in a referendum. An Oireachtas committee came up with a fresh interpretation of the judgment which would have given state money to campaigners on both sides. The Government decided this was unworkable and that legislation was needed to confine the Referendum Commission, set up under the McKenna judgment, to providing factual information rather than outlining the arguments for both sides.
What effect, if any, this will have on the electorate is not immediately clear. One thing is sure, the Treaty will not have a chance of being passed unless the voters believe in the seriousness of people promoting the Nice message.
Europe was sold to the Irish electorate in the first place largely on the basis of self-interest. Farmers, in particular, were persuaded that voting No to membership was tantamount to throwing money away.
With a few notable exceptions, Irish politicians tend to be reticent about the "European ideal". In the first place, they probably do not really believe in it and, secondly, they may be too embarrassed to espouse it in public.
Earlier this year I visited Koblenz in Germany and saw the EU's blue flag with 15 stars for the member-states being sold to French and German tourists, along with sticks of rock and holiday souvenirs.
It is difficult to imagine such an item on sale in a similar setting in Ireland. If the Irish had gone through the Franco-German experience of total warfare, they might be more receptive to the integrationist vision of the EU founding fathers.
Instead many voted No on the basis of a poster claiming "You Will Lose: Money, Power, Influence"; reversing that vote will probably require a similar message based on self-interest rather than idealism.
Deaglβn de BrΘad·n is Foreign Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times