The Government plans to emphasise protections it says are offered for Ireland's neutrality during the last week of campaigning in the Nice Treaty referendum campaign. The final days of the campaign are considered the most crucial, particularly with polls showing a large proportion of voters still undecided.
Ahead of Saturday's vote, the Government will place emphasis on the neutrality issue because it believes that many voters have not realised that the referendum - if passed - will bar Irish involvement in a European Union common defence without a further referendum.
Speaking alongside former Taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald and the former leader of the SDLP, Mr John Hume, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said yesterday that the referendum offered "the strongest protection ever for our neutrality". He continued: "One of the greatest distortions which we are hearing is the accusation that the EU is militaristic and represents a danger to our neutrality. In fact, the complete opposite is true."
Dr FitzGerald was even more forthright. "The extremes of Right and Left in our land have been brought together to argue that this treaty marks the militarisation of Europe. The allegation is apparently made on the old totalitarian principle that the bigger the lie, the more people will be fooled. Our people will not be fooled," he declared.
An opinion poll published in yesterday's Sunday Independent showed that 41 per cent of voters now intend to vote Yes. This is an increase on the 37 per cent support for the treaty shown in the last Irish Times/MRBI poll.
However, the IMS/Sunday Independent poll also showed that 27 per cent plan to reject the treaty, while 24 per cent were still undecided. Eight per cent of those surveyed said that they did not intend to vote. The poll found that the main issue concerning voters who intend to reject Nice is neutrality, while jobs and employment are the main factors behind the Yes vote.
Questioned about the seeming lack of support for Nice among 18/24-year-olds, the Taoiseach said: "They are the generation that will live with the advantages and suffer the disadvantages."