Anti-amendment people say they narrowed the gap

IT WAS a low poll but the Yes side won handsomely, so in soccer parlance the political establishment can say it "got a result". For their part, the No people can draw comfort from getting a higher vote than many had expected.

The RDS was quiet as a graveyard as the Dublin counts were completed yesterday. Was this the might and majesty of democracy in action, decision day at the court of the people? We had the second-lowest turnout in the history of Irish referendums at a time when the public is supposed to be consumed with fear and anger at the level of crime. Neither side can be happy about the turnout, so what went wrong?

Every party in the Dail except the Greens was in favour of this amendment, so there was never going to be much debate at that level. The burden of opposition was carried mainly by the Right to Bail Campaign, an umbrella group of civil liberties and prison reform groups as well as freelance activists, whose total expenditure for the campaign was less than £3,000.

For a time it looked as if the Catholic Church was on the brink of outright opposition to the amendment, but this impression was rapidly dispelled.

Fianna Fail had made it clear they were going to make crime one of their "flagship" issues in Opposition. The Soldiers of Destiny made the early running on bail and the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, was only too happy to take up the cause, nudging and prodding Fine Gael's Government partners to her point of view.

The atmosphere generated by the wave of attacks on the elderly, the series of alleged "contract" killings and finally the murder of Veronica Guerin put the referendum on the agenda at long last.

One of the more remarkable features of the campaign was that no TD in either the Labour Party or Democratic Left broke ranks in public. But this may reflect the fact that the debate never really got going.

Anti-amendment campaigners claim the mainstream parties were reluctant to get involved in debate. The Irish Penal Reform Trust tried to get pro-amendment TDs to take part in a discussion but was turned down by no fewer than 12 members of the Dail. In the end, the Labour Party Minister of State, Joan Burton, agreed to take part.

There has been no tradition of civil libertarianism in 20th-century Ireland. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties played an active part on the No side, but it is a small organisation with limited resources that has nothing like the clout or the profile of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Ad Hoc Commission on Referendum Information, comprising the Ombudsman and the Clerks of the Dail and Seanad, took out newspaper advertisements publicising the case for and against the amendment.

Although these arguments were clearly put, in plain language by the barristers hired for the job, a leading Yes campaigner commented that the presentation of the ads as a page of text without illustration was not likely to attract a high readership. There's a challenge waiting for some nonpartisan designer in the next referendum.

The information commission for the divorce referendum circulated booklets to each house. This time it was argued that there was insufficient time to prepare and distribute such a publication.

But one of the few things on which campaigners from both sides are agreed is that newspaper advertising on its own was insufficient and that booklets would have helped educate the public on the bail issue.

There has been criticism of RTE from the No side. All parties with three or more TDs are eligible for party political broadcasts, which meant that the Greens, with only one TD, were left out. The fact that the Greens have two MEPs and 19 local councillors has no bearing on their eligibility.

RTE points out that it allocated two radio and two TV broadcasts to the No campaign, with nothing for any non-parliamentary group supporting the amendment, such as Victim Support or the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.

Although the pro-amendment parties did devote resources to publicising their case, the level of expenditure was nowhere near general election levels. This was inevitable, given that the amendment was almost certain to pass anyway and the fact that the Dail itself is to be dissolved some time in the next year.

The lack of conflict among the five main parties on the issue helped to ensure that the bail issue, with all its technicalities, was never fully ventilated. The debate only really got going on Questions and Answers last Monday night.

Anti-amendment people at the RDS claimed that their efforts had helped to narrow the gap considerably in the referendum. They pointed out that the Irish Times poll on bail, published on October 1st, had shown eight-to-one support for the amendment and they had succeeded in narrowing this down to three-to-one.

But, the claims by the No side, that the bail changes amounted to a civil form of internment did not get through to most of those who voted.

The argument of the main parties that the change was limited, circumscribed and justified by circumstances won the day with the electorate - or at least that proportion which heard about the referendum and bothered to cast their vote.