As things now stand, I fear that a stand-alone referendum on the Amsterdam Treaty - one not combined with some election or referendum, such as on a Northern settlement - might see a turnout of less than 40 per cent. That would be even lower than the one for the Single European Act. Attendances at meetings on the treaty throughout the country have been extraordinarily low, and the provisions of the Amsterdam Treaty, although well presented in the media, simply do not seem to have impinged on public consciousness.
One of the reasons is that, unlike its predecessors, this treaty has no central focus upon which public attention can be concentrated. It does many good and useful things, none of which, however, is sufficiently dramatic to arouse strong interest.
At the same time, the provisions it contains to safeguard Irish interests are such that it cannot seriously be presented in a negative light. Even Patricia McKenna has found it almost impossible to make a case for the thesis that its provisions threaten to involve us in a military alliance!
The absence of any single major issue capable of evoking strong support, and equally of any issue that can be seriously presented as potentially dangerous to perceived Irish interests, has made it very difficult to focus people's attention on this impending referendum. So far as Europe is concerned, public interest remains centred instead upon next May's linkage of currencies as a prelude to the introduction of the euro.
And within our own island the drama of the Northern Ireland negotiations, upon which so much hangs for all of us, is absorbing attention - especially since the prospect of a settlement has appeared to be brought nearer by the recent talk of a May date for that referendum. There simply doesn't seem to be room left for much public interest in yet a third May event!
Nearer to the Amsterdam Treaty referendum I shall return to its many positive features. At this stage I shall deal only with its specifically Irish aspects.
The bulk of the treaty was drafted during the Irish EU Presidency in the second half of 1996 - this task having been undertaken with great success by the former Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Noel Dorr. His draft was widely acclaimed for its clarity and for the simplicity of its language - much, although not all, of which survived into the final version.
The Irish presidency placed great emphasis on the need to improve the Union's capacity to handle issues such as crime and drugs - and employment and unemployment.
Some progress was made with the first of these. While the Maastricht Treaty had extended to issues of crime and policing, it had left the matter to be dealt with outside the framework of the Community - by inter-governmental action, which tends to be slow and ineffective.
Even where governments can agree on measures to secure more effective action by member-states against international criminals and drug smugglers, such agreements often enter into force only when all the signatories have ratified them - and that can take years.
The Amsterdam Treaty provides that once half of the member-states have ratified them, such agreements can become binding upon those who have completed ratification.
Moreover, some matters have been transferred to the competence of the Community, e.g visas, immigration and free movement of persons. Decisions reached unanimously on these can be given detailed implementation by qualified majority voting on directives setting out the general lines of action to be taken by member governments.
Implementation cannot, however, be by means of regulations having direct application in member-states. And the Court of Justice is excluded from jurisdiction over domestic police matters.
These provisions may not go as far as might have been desirable, given the international character of much crime in today's world - but it represents significant progress, for which the Irish presidency can take considerable credit.
Our last government seems to have achieved more even than it had hoped for on jobs and joblessness - partly because of the changes in government in Britain and France during the closing stages of the negotiations.
This is, of course, an area where the main responsibility for action must continue to rest with national governments. But what has concerned us in Ireland has been how existing treaties' provisions on member-states' economic policies are directed primarily towards requiring each state "to ensure the equilibrium of its overall balance of payments and to maintain confidence in its currency", - employment being relegated to a subordinate clause, viz. "while taking care to ensure a high level of employment . . ."
The Irish presidency's approach has ensured that "a high level of employment" will be given equal status with the existing objectives, and it has also secured a new chapter on employment which, among other things, provides for incentives to encourage trans-national co-operation.
Another area where our government proved successful was on issues of social exclusion - especially for the old and for young people. Despite some opposition, reference to this issue has been included, with provision for action to be taken by qualified majority voting.
Another successful Irish initiative led to the inclusion of a provision securing the right for national governments to fund public service broadcasting - a right that had seemed to be under potential challenge from the market-oriented Competition Directorate-General of the Commission.
In addition to securing these and other advances, our government also succeeded in ensuring that our interests would be protected against certain possible future dangers. With regard to the Schengen Agreement's provision for passport-free movement between member-countries, we secured an opt-out for the duration of the Anglo-Irish Common Travel Area and a right to opt in if and when the common travel area arrangement ceases.
In the meantime, we have a right to participate in decisions about the future of the Schengen arrangement.
Together with a number of other countries - Italy, Portugal, Austria, and the Netherlands - we also secured the introduction of a long list of safeguards against the danger that several countries might seek to abuse provisions for flexibility, so as to go ahead on their own with new projects in which we might not wish to participate but which, if proceeded with, might damage our interests.
Finally, in relation to foreign policy and defence, a series of provisions has been included to protect our interests. A right of national veto on foreign policy initiatives has been retained with, however, an option of "constructive abstention". This could be used where we might not wish to inhibit a foreign policy initiative by the Union, while preferring not to be actively involved in it ourselves.
Thus we have the right to be involved in the Union's foreign policy formulation, enjoying the opportunity with other like-minded states of influencing it in what we would see as a constructive direction, while remaining free to opt out if a majority of our partners wishes to take action along lines with which we are not happy.
Our interests are equally well protected in the defence area. We recognised in the Maastricht Treaty the aspiration of many of our partners to move eventually towards some kind of common defence policy - a general aspiration to which successive Irish taoisigh have subscribed since 1961.
A common defence policy now encompasses a number of areas of potential interest to us, such as humanitarian and rescue tasks as were undertaken under UN auspices, albeit with mixed success, in Yugoslavia at an early stage of the crisis in that country.
It also includes peacekeeping tasks and tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking, along the lines of the successful operation in Yugoslavia more recently, by a multinational force including a Russian contingent, operating under NATO auspices. While it is true that the Amsterdam Treaty, like its predecessor, provides for the framing of a common defence policy which might also lead to a military alliance involving mutual defence commitments, there is little sign of this coming about in the EU in the foreseeable future. For such an EU military linkage is opposed not only by other neutral states, such as Austria, Sweden and Finland, but by Atlanticist countries such as Britain and Denmark, which fear that such a move could weaken NATO solidarity. In the event of anything developing along these lines, our position is protected by a provision in Article J.7.1 of the Amsterdam Treaty, which safeguards "the specific character of security and defence polices of member-states", and a provision that decisions in defence matters must be adopted by member-states "in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements".
There is also provision that policy decisions on defence must be unanimous. Even operational decisions to implement any agreed defence policy require unanimity - unlike foreign policy implementation decisions, which can be taken by qualified majority once the basic policy has been agreed by all.
Given the Supreme Court's 1987 decision that even a treaty amendment involving foreign policy decisions to be taken unanimously required a constitutional referendum, it seems to me that our participation in any defence arrangement must also be subject to a similar popular vote - to which all our political parties are committed.
In the face of this accumulation of safeguards one on top of the other, anyone attempting to suggest that the Amsterdam Treaty poses a threat to Irish military neutrality is likely to be greeted with profound scepticism by our electorate.
Like the Luxembourg Treaty establishing the single market, where something like half the amendments made at European Council level were ones put forward by Ireland, this treaty bears the stamp of careful and successful Irish diplomacy. It deserves wholehearted endorsement by our electorate.