OPINION: THE IMPRESSIVE David Miliband breezed into town during the week and said all the right things about the Irish Government's response to the Lisbon Treaty debacle, writes Stephen Collins
Noises from other quarters are not nearly as comforting, though. On the day Miliband was in Dublin, a senior French government source was quoted as saying that Europe is waiting for Ireland to do something more than analyse a survey.
The different responses of our European partners to the referendum defeat have highlighted a shift in Ireland's position in the EU. Our new best friends, who insist that Ireland should not be bullied, are the British while our traditional patrons, the French and the Germans, have begun to show their exasperation with Irish double-think.
The British show of solidarity is a welcome sign of the mature and friendly relations between two neighbouring countries. However, it should not disguise the fact that it is also in Britain's long-term interests to take Ireland under its wing and entice us away from the Franco-German ambit which has been the driving force of the EU.
It is also one thing to have the sympathy and support of a benign British Labour government, which has demonstrated its empathy with Ireland over the past 10 years. It will be something else altogether if, as looks inevitable, a Tory Eurosceptic administration takes over in about two years' time and sets about trying to wreck the EU.
Finding ourselves in the same camp as a narrow-minded Little England government and the vilest elements of the British media will mark a sad end to a European adventure that has brought so much benefit to this country in terms of genuine independence and financial well-being. That prospect makes it imperative that the Government decides on its strategy so that the treaty is off the agenda by the time of the next British election.
Miliband may have been too diplomatic to spell it out for Micheál Martin on Thursday, but the sooner the Irish sort out the problem, the better chance the British Labour Party has of avoiding being put on the defensive about the EU during the next election campaign.
Our other major EU partners would like to see the matter sorted in time for the European elections next June and the appointment of a new EU Commission in the autumn. The French newspaper Le Monde quoted the country's European affairs minister, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, on Thursday as saying that his government expects solutions to our Lisbon problem by the end of the year, with a referendum in Ireland before the European elections.
A source in President Nicolas Sarkozy's office in the Elysée Palace was quoted as saying that the rest of Europe was waiting for Ireland to do something more than analyse a survey. It seems, though, that Europe will have to wait for some time to find out exactly what Brian Cowen and his Government plan to do. This will annoy the Spanish, who will lose four seats in the European Parliament as a result of the failure to ratify Lisbon in time for the European elections, but that problem is nothing to the reaction if the next European Commission has to be put on hold while our partners wait for the Irish to decide what to do. The publication of the survey was just the first step in the Irish process of reflection and, while the research didn't tell us much we didn't know already, it did buy the Government some time. From the last Irish Times poll before the referendum in June, and the subsequent research carried out for the European Commission, it was already public knowledge that the main reason people gave for voting No was that they didn't know what the treaty was about.
The Government-commissioned research elaborated on this by finding that a third of people thought that conscription into a European army and an end to Ireland's abortion ban were part of the Lisbon Treaty while over 40 per cent believed it would end our corporate tax rate. That stunning level of credulity about the contents of the treaty begs the question of how it can ever be passed by an Irish electorate.
There was comfort for the Government, and the main Opposition parties who campaigned for a Yes vote, in the fact that a substantial majority of people think the EU is a good thing and that Ireland should remain at the heart of the project. So the conundrum facing all those on the Yes side is how to convert the positive view of the EU into support for a treaty aimed at making its institutions work more effectively. The Government and the main Opposition parties have decided to approach the problem through a parliamentary forum as a first step.
This forum will essentially be an Oireachtas subcommittee and will need to have some high-profile senior political figures and include TDs and Senators opposed to the Lisbon Treaty, including Sinn Féin. Attempting to put the treaty into the broader context of Ireland's relations with the EU and burying some far-fetched claims about it will be a serious task for the committee.
There is little doubt that another referendum will take place, probably in the autumn of next year. The big question is what form that referendum will take. If it is a simple Yes or No to the Lisbon Treaty it will be difficult to carry, no matter how well the parliamentary forum does its work.
The only way it can be carried is to redefine the question, either by isolating the elements of the treaty that require a referendum and allowing the Oireachtas to ratify the rest, or else taking the nuclear option of asking the electorate whether or not they want the country to remain fully involved in the EU.