A copy of the Agreement was posted to every household in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and put to referendums the following May, which gave them substantial support by 74% and 94% respectively.
BBC on the Good Friday Agreement Referendum, 22 May 1998
I remember seeing one of those copies at my cousins' home, on the coffee table and well-thumbed. They had read it before voting.
I’m voting ‘no,' though I don’t know an awful lot about it.
Brendan Fairbrother, retired Dubliner, quoted in today's New York Times by Sarah Lyall.
It looks like Mr. Fairbrother hasn't studied the 287-page Lisbon Treaty, but I can't be sure. For those Irish voters (or readers) who want a quick summary, today's Irish Independent provides "The Treaty Made Simple."
If Brendan Fairbrother can't manage 287 pages of, as Sarah Lyall writes, "vintage bureacratese," I can't really blame him. Nor is it the fault of the Irish that their constitution requiring Yes/No plebiscites puts them in, as today's Guardian cheerfully calls it, Europe's "awkward squad" along with Denmark and other sometime naysayers. That's the problem with referendums: reducing complex 287-page treaties to a yes or no response can elicit the "wrong" response. "Wrong" as in "no." What then? As the NYT's Lyall reports, "French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, spoke ominously on Tuesday of a “Franco-German” response to a “no” vote." Sarkozy, who early in his presidency made a big show over his role in "simplifying" the treaty, has a personal investment in its ratification.
A "Franco-German response?" France tried to help the Irish win their independence in 1798, "The Year of the French" (great historical novel, by the way, by Thomas Flanagan). That didn't go well, and the Irish had to wait another century-plus to rid themselves of the colonial British. Germans have been buying up lots of vacation homes in Ireland in recent years, and Germany's designs on a newly-independent neutral Ireland in the '30s and '40s worried the Anglo-American alliance, but things never went too far. The Irish have to vote - it's not optional.
It's this kind of talk, Monsieur Sarkozy, that gets Ireland's Irish up, so to speak. As the Irish Independent's cheat sheet puts it on the cherished notion of Irish neutrality:
Q:What does the treaty do on the military front?
A:Over the last five decades Ireland has built an internationally respected reputation for UN peacekeeping, thanks in part to neutrality.
Fears have been expressed over military expansion in Europe and demands on countries to massively increase their defence budgets.
Under the Lisbon Treaty, foreign, security and defence decisions must be made unanimously.
Ireland's neutrality is protected but there is an obligation to aid and assist, in accordance with the UN, a state which is the victim of armed aggression.
The type of aid and assistance that is required is not specified, but it must not affect security and defence policies of states, including Ireland's neutrality.
Also, states are obliged to help each other after a terrorist attack, natural or man-made disaster.
Such step-by-step gingerly handling of the Neutrality Question may strike non-Irish readers as overly cautious in the post Cold War present. Not so. Neutrality, and supposed threats to it, is sacred to the Irish. I recall that when the US Mission to NATO (of which I was then a part) organized a seminar in a Dublin suburb in the late '90s, there was a mini-hullabaloo over this "military alliance" coming to neutral Ireland. That the conference was on NATO's expansion to the East (and not west to Ireland) mattered little. It was their very presence on neutral soil that counted.
Referendums, like elections, are sometimes decided on issues that have nothing to do with the question at hand. Are voters unhappy (or happy?) with the ruling coalition this month? Has the president (or prime minister, or chancellor) been unpopular of late? Do people want to get their revenge by opposing whatever the government is proposing? How's the weather on referendum day? The Guardian:
Europe's future, being decided today, may hinge on such happenstance as the Irish weather. An unlovely day could keep people at home. A low turnout will hurt the pro-European vote.
Today's weather forecast for Ireland is "intermittent clouds." Will attitudes toward the European benefactor - the hand that helps feed the Celtic Tiger - be sunny today?
(Image Source: Traditional Lace Makers of Ireland)