Ireland Prepares to Pass Judgment on Eu Treaty

Voters on the remote islands off Donegal gave their verdicts on the EU's Lisbon treaty yesterday, just to be sure their ballot papers arrive at polling centers for the count after Thursday's Irish referendum.

Alone in the EU, Ireland's constitution requires such a consultation, with the result that a country of 4.3 million people, less than 1% of the EU total, holds the treaty's fate in its hands.

Both sides are surprisingly jittery about the outcome, bitter too about outside influences which range from the buoyant Irish sales of Eurosceptic Fleet Street newspapers to Peter Mandelson, whose careless remarks about global farm price negotiations forced ministers to promise to deploy Ireland's veto if needed.

And who exactly is Declan Ganley, the campaign's Mr No? his critics ask.

One weekend poll found the yes camp narrowly ahead by 42% to 39% with 19% undecided or - many of them - baffled. Another shocked the political establishment (all the parties, including for once the Greens, are pro-treaty, except miniscule Sinn Féin with its four TDs) by giving no 35% (twice its recent share), yes 30% and the undecideds 18%.

That poll was conducted face to face, which will have exaggerated the working class no vote.

Win or lose, it will be an embarrassment for Gordon Brown: "Why can't we vote too?" Lose and it will provoke furious charges of ingratitude from Brussels.

How could Ireland, whose Celtic Tiger economy has been transformed in 35 years of EU membership, reject a treaty which simply tries to make the system work better, says the yes camp, led by Brian Cowen. Bertie Ahern's former finance minister only took over as Fianna Fail leader and Taoiseach in April and, like Brown, is struggling.

Everyone remembers Ireland's no to the 2001 Nice treaty, which Lisbon "updates" with streamlined decision-making and a permanent president, who probably won't be Tony Blair. Ireland was asked to vote again. France and the Netherlands were not.

It is that sequence of events which goaded Ganley, a London-born Irish businessman, into pouring €1.3m into the no campaign. He is Ireland's Stuart Wheeler, the spread bet millionaire who took Gordon Brown to London's high court yesterday over his refusal to hold a UK referendum (the legal odds are against Wheeler). If Wheeler is a trouble-making political maverick - a gambling chum of Jimmy Goldsmith and Lord Lucan - so is Ganley, a friend of US military brass, whose Libertas campaign has plastered the republic with blue posters and leaflets.

Could Ganley tip the result either way? Or will it be the perennial issues of abortion, cherished Irish neutrality (the big issue for Sinn Féin, which did badly in last year's elections) or EU "threats" to low Irish corporation tax rates?

Turnout could be decisive. The odd thing is that both sides suspect that, despite their bloodcurdling rhetoric, Europe will stagger on.