Brian Cowen is an affable but direct sort of fellow. He is like the man in the commercial who looks straight out at you from the TV screen and says, while you sit bolt upright on your living-room sofa, "It does exactly what it says on the tin."
As far as Cowen is concerned, the Treaty of Nice does exactly what it says in the text. He is particularly galled by claims that the Nice Treaty will bring Ireland into NATO. "There is simply no mutual defence guarantee in the Treaty of Nice."
Or, as they say in New York slang: "NATO Schmato!" Nevertheless, in the unlikely but not entirely inconceivable event that this Treaty is defeated, the main reason will probably be fears, whether justified or not, about getting drawn into supranational military adventures and having to fight someone else's war.
"No to Nato, No to Nice" say the Peace and Neutrality Alliance and Sinn Fein posters. Supporters of the Treaty resent it every bit as much as pro-divorce campaigners in the past used to hate the slogan, "Keep a roof over your head, vote No". NATO membership is not part of the Treaty but the No propaganda has made much of the new Rapid Reaction Force which it portrays as a steppingstone to joining the NATO club. Cowen may protest that there is no link between the two, apart from the practical use of NATO airlift equipment to ferry EU troops to some trouble-spot, but the suspicion remains.
The Workers' Party intervened yesterday with a press release highlighting the fact that a senior official from the Department of Foreign Affairs would be attending the first formal meeting of EU and NATO foreign ministers in Budapest this morning. The party's spokesman on the Nice Treaty said the "revelation had blown the Governments' neutrality pretence out of the water".
However, a Foreign Affairs spokesman said the purpose of the meeting was to review the situation in the Western Balkans: there would be consultation, but there was no question of the meeting having the authority to make decisions, as this was a separate matter for each side. As a member of the Partnership for Peace (PfP) group, Ireland will also be represented at official level in a separate meeting in Budapest this morning of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which includes 19 NATO countries and 27 PfP members. Two years ago, Ireland joined PfP which is a programme launched in 1994 to foster co-operation between NATO and non-NATO states.
The timing of all this is a little unfortunate, with the Yes campaign trying to damp down what it sees as paranoia about NATO and the Treaty of Nice. The No lobby has generated considerable mileage from the fact that, in opposition, Fianna Fail opposed membership of PfP and said any modification in our neutrality would require a referendum, but once the party got back into government it signed up for PfP without putting it to the people.
The summary of the Yes arguments by the Referendum Commission, now posted on its website at www.refcom.ie, points out that the Rapid Reaction Force was not created in the Nice document but that the Treaty brings it "under the direct control of the EU's institutional framework". Furthermore, the Government could decide to opt in or out of RRF operations as it saw fit and would only approve participation in missions that had a UN mandate.
The summary from the No side, on the other hand, states baldly that, "The Treaty brings an army, called the Rapid Reaction Force (RRF), associated with NATO and a military command structure, into the EU for the first time." Fear, paranoia, suspicion, conspiracies: this Referendum's got everything.