The Irish Say ‘No’

Katie Watson on Why the Irish Said No

On Thursday June 12, Irish citizens voted no to the Lisbon Treaty, an EU agreement that would have redistributed power within the European Commission by creating a full-time EU president and a single foreign-policy head. The ‘no’ vote came as a surprise to many, including Irish bookmakers who paid out tens of thousands of Euros when the polls closed because they thought a yes vote was a sure thing. After all, Ireland has prospered more than any other county from being a part of the European Union.

When it joined the European Community in 1973, the Irish were facing poverty, unemployment, and mass immigration to help solve those problems. The average industrial worker only earned €38.30 ($59) per week. Membership helped Ireland, but the 1980s continued to be a time of desperate poverty. Life in Ireland didn’t start to look up until the 1990s, due to a restructuring of tax laws and money from the European Union. By 2000, the GDP per capita had shot up to $30,100. Today it is currently at 120 percent of the average for the EU, up from 66 percent.

The prosperity is visible everywhere. Dublin’s Grafton Street, a wide pedestrian avenue lined with stores, is bustling with shops full as soon as they open no matter the day. Current Irish culture is about remembering poverty not by saving, but by buying a new style as soon as it appears on the racks. Ireland has a 4.6 percent unemployment rate, and Ireland’s GDP per capita is now $43,100, the second highest in the European Union. Despite the many economic jabs aimed at the half of the population that falls north of the River Liffey, only seven percent of Irish residents fall below the poverty line.

“Good for Ireland, Good for Europe, Vote Yes,” proclaimed Fianna Fáil campaign posters, trying to make Irish citizens recall the poverty of their childhoods – a time before a Starbucks latte reached €4.00 ($6.20), or before there was enough disposable income to avail of any luxuries. Ireland’s Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Brian Cowen is a member of Fianna Fáil, and following the heads of state of the other 26 EU countries, he endorsed the treaty. The support of Fianna Fáil, along with Fine Gael, and the Labour Party, put the ‘yes’ side at an advantage. The campaign encouraged the unity of not only Europe, but also of the individual parties that supported the treaty. Enda Kenny, the head of Fine Gael, was especially strong in this, urging his supporters to forget their problems with Fianna Fáil and to support the treaty as a whole.

This effort was not, however, enough; 53.4 percent of voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty, even though the only Dáil party in favor of rejecting the treaty was Sinn Féin, who focused on the message that as part of Europe Ireland should not settle for sub-par treatment. The ‘no’ side drew its strength from Irish history, choosing to capitalize on the centuries-old Irish fight for independence rather than economics.

Sinn Féin reminded voters of the independence Ireland has fought over for hundreds of years. Campaign information included messages about remembering the Irish who died for these rights. ‘No’ supporters likened the supposed loss of Ireland’s voting strength and right to a commissioner to losing the independence.

But what lay behind the actual ‘no’ vote was much more than a sentimental journey into Ireland’s past. With much of the Celtic Tiger boom credited to the lax corporate tax laws in Ireland, many people feared what might happen to the economy if Ireland lost control of tax levels, causing the corporations to leave, taking with them their high salaries and the employees who flood that money back into the economy.

“Mine is the first generation that can confidently expect to fulfill their potential in Ireland,” Cowen said in a press conference last week. But for as long as poverty has been a main component of Irish history and identity, so has immigration. “From a country of emigration by necessity,” Cowen continued, “we are now a county of immigration by choice.” Ten percent of Ireland’s population is now made up of foreign nationals, a majority from Poland, Slovakia, and Russia. On the surface Ireland seems to be accepting these immigrants with grocery chains importing Polish food and Irish hospitals translating paperwork into Russian, but many Irish are fearful of their foreign-born neighbors taking the jobs that they do not even want, and large numbers of foreign-born residents have reported encountering discrimination during their time in Ireland. Ireland has such a low unemployment rate that it is hard to tell how much of this fear is over a lack of jobs in the future or just simply old-fashioned xenophobia. A survey done by the European Commission immediately after the referendum found that while one percent of the population reportedly voted no to avoid an influx of immigrants, 12 percent voted ‘no’ to protect Irish identity, a concerns that reflects the Irish thinking of themselves a nation with an emigrant rather than an immigrant history.

What was not clarified in the Lisbon referendum were the benefits for voting either way. Each side produced its own literature, with the government (whose leader supported the treaty) producing a neutral booklet serving as a summary. Supporters of both sides complained that the treaty was incomprehensible, and the lengthy summarized version did little to help. Cowen undermined his own support of the treaty by admitting that he hadn’t even read the whole version, while former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern added to the continuing distrust in the government by stepping down this spring amidst controversy over his finances.

Over and over again, critics have charged that Ireland has ruined the treaty, which like any EU treat must be ratified by all EU members, and therefore ruined Europe. This little country, which is in many ways closer to Boston than to Berlin, has reversed the decision of the rest the European Union with its vote of ‘no.’ In this case, the vote of four million people counted more than 500 million.

The critics forget that the big difference between Ireland and the rest of Europe is that the four million Irish were given a chance to vote on Lisbon, while their 500 million neighbors were not. Their legislators acted on their behalf. What really has the rest of Europe worried is that Ireland’s vote might represent a view shared by many of its own citizens who, if given the chance, would also have opposed the Lisbon Treaty.

Katie Watson is pursuing an M.Phil in comparative literature at Trinity College, Dublin. Her writing has appeared in USAToday. Photo: Posters in Dublin (Jnestorius / public domain).