THE CAMPAIGN on the Lisbon Treaty, including the work of the Referendum Commission, did little to increase understanding of the document among the general public, two prominent political scientists told the Joint Committee on the Constitution at Leinster House yesterday.
In a submission entitled, "The Role of the Referendum Commission", Trinity College Dublin Professors Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh pointed out that opinion poll data showed the level of public awareness was about the same at the conclusion of the referendum campaign as it was at the beginning.
"The Referendum Commission polled people prior to [the] campaign and found 62 per cent did not understand the treaty at all and less than 20 per cent understood it at least to some extent.
"A week before the [referendum] (an Irish Times poll), and again after [the] campaign (a Millward Brown poll) found 60 per cent were no more than vaguely aware of issues in [the] treaty and only 7-9 per cent claimed a good understanding.
"Clearly the campaign, including the work of the commission, did little to increase subjective understanding. At the time of the referendum more people said they did not know enough than said so at the time of the second referendum on Nice.
"The campaign offered fewer certainties and perhaps even confused people.
''Certainly, all research showed many people believed a yes vote would bring about changes that few experts saw as following from the treaty," Professors Gallagher and Marsh said.
Prof Richard Sinnott of University College Dublin said Article 27 of the Irish Constitution/ Bunreacht na hEireann was an alternative mechanism for holding a referendum instead of Article 46 as at present.
The advantages of Article 27 were that it could be interpreted as implying a constitutional role for political parties in the process. This further implied that public funds could be used by those parties in a referendum campaign, which is deemed to be prohibited under the terms of the McKenna judgment of the Supreme Court and likewise with party-political broadcasts which currently were not aired during referendums.
In response to a request from Fine Gael TD Jim O'Keeffe for "practical suggestions" on the conduct of a referendum campaign, Prof Marsh said it was "probably unwise" to give too much attention to giving out the full facts because this was not what the public required. They don't need the full facts. They need a good 'steer' from people they have reason to trust."
Fine Gael Senator Eugene Regan said the news media "seemed to suspend their critical faculties" as between the arguments on either side in the course of a referendum campaign.
Labour TD Brendan Howlin, commenting on his experience of canvassing for the Lisbon Treaty, said: "I met hundreds of people, probably thousands, who said they didn't understand the treaty and the subtext was they didn't want to understand the treaty.
"What such people were thinking was, 'If I say I'm open to knowing, I have a job of work to do.' "
Green Party Senator Dan Boyle questioned the wisdom of changing the terms of reference of the Referendum Commission between the first and second Nice referendums, so that it was no longer required to summarise the arguments on both sides.
"It could be argued that it allowed for misrepresentation," he said.