The Real Reason Ireland Said No to the Lisbon Treaty
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 12:39AM 
Forget the last week of commentary on the Lisbon Treaty debacle. Nobody really knows why the Irish voted no. Except me and four million other Irish people.
I'm an Irish citizen (albeit one living in Berlin), who has read the Irish Referendum Commission's free, impartial, 16 page guide to the Lisbon Treaty. I've even tried to read a bit of the treaty itself (dear God). Did you know the first words are - in wonderfully shouty capital letters -
"PREAMBLE
HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF THE BELGIANS..."
A promising, even rousing, start, but it's all downhill from there. Reading the 294 pages of the treaty tells you absolutely nothing, unless you also happen to be holding your old copy of the Treaty on European Union in your other hand. While sitting on your well-worn copy of the Treaty Establishing the European Community.
Typical random chunk of the Treaty of Lisbon (I think it's article 9(b):
"At the end of the first sentence of the first subparagraph of paragraph 1, the words "and address appropriate recommendations to that State" shall be deleted; at the end of the last sentence, the words "and, acting in accordance with the same procedure, may call on independent persons to submit within a reasonable time limit a report on the situation in the Member State in question" shall be replaced by "and may address recommendations to it, acting in accordance with the same procedure."
Eh? EH? Vote for what again? And there's 294 pages of this stuff.
So we had no idea what we were voting for, and the commentators in the papers (who definitely haven't read it), have no idea what they are commenting on. Given that huge teams of negotiators and translators worked on this in sections, there is absolutely nobody on earth who knows what's in it. It could all be a complicated joke - after all, the first letter of each paragraph in the Maltese translation spells "Sarkozy's bum smells." Though perhaps that's a coincidence.
My feeling, for what it's worth, is that they should have put in a paragraph promising us all an icecream if we voted yes. At least that would have been something concrete that we could have visualised. It would have stood out a mile, for its clarity and lack of ambiguity, in the Irish Referendum Commission's summary of the Treaty. And given that the weather was fairly good on the day of the vote, it might well have swung the referendum.
Reader Comments (11)
I just posted a comment on my blog that you wrote in response to the New York Times piece on MFA's on April 1st. I cited you and linked to your blog and wrote an introduction. If you wish me to delete the post or shorten the comment I will, but my readers aren't likely to hunt for it and I thought it conveyed an important message.You can find it here and let me know what you decide. E-mail is also fine. Thanks.
http://ritereading.blogspot.com/2008/06/julian-gough-on-cinderella-schools-for.html
Writer Reading: Julian Gough on MFA Programs
I certainly got an awful lot of visitors from the New York Times after that discussion. (I could tell from my traffic meter). Seems to have touched several pretty raw nerves. It's good to see the debate continuing on your site.
Best of luck with the writing,
-Julian
Europe will survive, Ireland will survive. Next time we are asked for our opinion, maybe the polititians will not be so arrogant. Betty G.
http://www.thelocal.de/12043/20080523/
Hey, we provide a full, 24-hour service...
And yeah, Wowi looks pretty glum... Understandably... His coalition partners shafted him, and didn't even achieve anything by doing it.
I'll look out for your book.
But could you please send the ice cream over later, not sooner? It's raining today in Dublin.
Naturally so. Our Commissioner has done this deliberately, to force us to read the treaty again. Not? And how can we be sure of that?
Yes, what amazed me about our TDs was this air of "Bad, bad children. You haven't done your homework!"
This joke about being told where to sign and telling the man where to get off cost them nothing. If you want something, pay in cash. None of this reams of paperwork and consumer-guarantees nonsense with a salesman you trust. You still don't have to read anything, just use your judgement, right?
I found several good summaries, oddly enough, written by Irish people - & voted yes - one of the 46% who did - and now I feel totally lost for something else to read.
Sarkozy must be dying for something new to read as well. I'm sure he's going to fly through your new book, so if anyone's chatting to him, I would recommend that he follow that with the Annals of the Four Masters.
Links are on Wikipedia or Google for all. Except that this summer, half of us somehow forgot how to do even that.
See http://wombatdiet.net/2008/06/13/lucky-friday-the-13th/
In any case it's strange that the twist of fate vis a viz de Valera's influence (see above) hasn't been more widely noted.
It would be entertaining to see the Irish people vote on the stupidest comment of all.
From London my vote so far would be for that of Roger Cohen in the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/opinion/19cohen.html?_r=1&oref=login
Title: The Muck Of The Irish
It was reprinted in the Herald Tribune with a different title.
It's an obnoxious and racist piece that is more about Israel and Turkey than Ireland and the EU.
Hi all you other visitors from the FT, pleased to see you... Big hi to Trevor, it was great to get your email!
Eats Wombats, glad you like it. And yes, I read the Roger Cohen piece. I was shocked by it. I like Roger Cohen, but that piece, "The Muck of the Irish", stank. I've already commented twice on his International Herald Tribune blog about it, but I think I'll do another post on Lisbon, Ireland, and his piece tomorrow, because "The Muck of the Irish" is so wildly unfair and wrong, it needs to be answered as widely as possible.
I'm surprised, because he can be really good sometimes.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/18/opinion/edcohen.php
You can comment on it on his blog here... But be polite! Just because he's been rude doesn't mean he deserves rudeness in return. He's a good egg, he just doesn't know what he's talking about.
http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/opinion/passages/?p=100
My second comment on his piece is still "Awaiting moderation", so it's not up there yet. I may as well paste it in here for you guys...
Here it is...
I should probably mention that the Times (the London one) asked me to write a comment piece on Ireland and the Lisbon Treaty just before the vote, so I suppose I must be considered vaguely knowledgeable about this. I said no, as I’m trying to finish a novel. I wish I’d said yes now, if this is the standard of journalism being printed on the subject.
I do hope you read these comments, Roger. (Some of the couple of hundred comments above are rude, stupid and bigoted, but don’t use that to dismiss the broad, overall thrust of the criticism.) I like your stuff, but this really was an extremely poor article. You’re wrong on pretty much everything. The motivations you project onto the Irish electorate are just shockingly off.
One small, random example - how did fear of the Polish plumber - that old French bogey - get into an article about Ireland? That’s like an Irish journalist loudly attacking Portland, Oregon, for something that happened in Texas. Ireland was extremely keen for Polish plumbers, and allowed the new accession states full access to the Irish labour market when pretty much nobody else in the EU did. There is zero tension between Poles and Irish, we get on like a vodka factory on fire. The main evening paper has a big Polish language supplement, our mothers hang out with the young Poles after mass, etc etc.
All your points are similarly wildly off. The Ireland you describe simply doesn’t exist.
I loved the last piece I read by you, some weeks ago, on race in America (Race and American Memory - I recommend it strongly to those commenters who, understandably but wrongly, call Roger a bigot based on this awful Irish piece. Google Roger Cohen race.) I almost sent you an email to congratulate you on that one. I wish I had now, to balance this. It’s terrible to damn, having never praised. Reflects badly on my character.
But, seriously, The Muck of the Irish is a shocker of an article. It’s going to make it very hard to trust you on other issues where I’m not as well informed.
-Julian Gough
http://www.juliangough.com/jou.....reaty.html
London, Galway, Berlin.
This (on a revisit) has me laughing out loud (sorry I will not use the acroynm). Catholicism has some use after all. I have a few engaging memories of the Philippines.
1. Driving through a town, sorry, a major bottleneck, called Calamba and seeing on the lamposts the list of fabulous places one could work overseas: (reading up the lamppost) Australia! USA!! Ireland!!!
2. Meeting someone who had a sister working in Ireland and who was delighted to report that NOT JUST were the streets paved with gold but the people went to mass every Sunday and were the FRIENDLIEST people you could meet. In fact, it was THE PROMISED LAND.
3. Finding my hospitalised old man got a little extra chat out of some Filipina nurses by telling them "my son in is the Philippines"... after all, not many could say the same.