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**Hugh** · 14-11-2018, 12:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pierre

Oh yeah, and of course they would have offered us a fantastic deal!

DC tried to do a deal before the referendum, and was sent home with a flea in his ear.

---------- Post added at 11:09 ---------- Previous post was at 11:07 ----------

That's right, the time when we should have had a referendum. The Irish had one, and they opposed it, and then they were told to have another one until they agreed with it.

Sound familiar.

Like Brexit, it wasn't that simple...

Quote:

Let’s look at the second Irish referendum on the Lisbon EU treaty. This vote in June 2008 resulted in a decisive defeat for the EU treaty. In a turnout of 53%, 53% voted no, which was a major shock to the government and main opposition parties which had decisively endorsed the treaty. In October 2009 the Irish electorate voted again and returned a very different result. With turnout of 58%, 67% of voters voted yes and just two of the country’s 43 electoral constituencies voted no. A majority of men and women of all age groups and socioeconomic classes endorsed the treaty.

How was this achieved? The Irish government played for time at home. It turned to research to understand voter attitudes, commissioning a comprehensive academic study on the behaviour of the electorate. By September 2008, the government had solid evidence on why voters voted the way they did, and could begin to craft a strategy. Armed with the results, the Irish parliament interrogated Ireland’s future in the EU, and its deliberations led to the publication of a report titled Ireland’s Future in the European Union: Challenges, Issues and Options. While the people had spoken through a referendum, representative democracy reasserted its core role in the Irish political system and the quality of debate underlined the seriousness of the issues at stake.

At the same time, the Irish government engaged intensively with its EU partners. Neither side wanted to lose the Lisbon treaty. By December 2008, the broad outline of a deal was emerging which included the retention of one commissioner per state and legal guarantees on issues such as taxation, security and abortion. Next came the difficult task of translating this into a document. The Irish negotiators met every member state government at least twice and many three or four times between January and June 2009 to achieve agreement. On the eve of the June 2009 European council meeting, the then Irish prime minister, Brian Cowen, wrote to his counterparts saying that without legally binding guarantees he was unwilling to hold a referendum. With such guarantees, the government was prepared to go back to the electorate to ask “is this your final answer?”

Irish voters, particularly “soft” no voters, did not resent voting again because many of them felt that their first vote was uninformed. Lack of knowledge, information and understanding was cited by 42% of those who voted no first time. Unsurprisingly, those voters at the harder end of the no spectrum objected to the second referendum but the majority of voters were willing to revisit the question given the guarantees...

...Was the second vote a travesty of democracy? More people voted in the second referendum and the treaty was carried in urban and rural Ireland and across all socioeconomic groups. Moreover, people felt that they had a much better grasp of the issues. A democracy has the right to change its mind.

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...d-lisbon-polls