Austerity Ireland gives the Government one last chance
What made this referendum different to the other eight was that no sideshows were introduced into the debate. The old EU debate reliables of abortion, euthanasia and conscription which cropped up routinely in other referendum campaigns were nowhere to be seen.
Neither were the campaigns to save various hospitals, where local issues which had no relevance to European treaties became central to the referendum debate in certain constituencies. Groups such as the Roscommon Hospital Action Committee, which actively campaigned against the first Lisbon treaty although it accepted there was no link between the agreement and the hospital issue, were nowhere to be seen on this occasion. The coupling of unrelated issues, such as the IFA linking Lisbon and the World Trade Organization talks, was also absent in this campaign.
