In 1998 nearly 40 per cent of the electorate voted No to the Amsterdam Treaty, despite the main Dail parties and the newspapers urging a Yes. So there is clearly a constituency in Ireland for euro-scepticism.
These are the real reasons, in my opinion, for the call by Government politicians for a debate on Europe. Which is not to say that debate is not needed if a slumbering public is to be alerted to what their political leaders plan to sign them up for in the Treaty of Nice on December 8th-9th. For that treaty is the next step to the EU superstate, with its own currency, army, foreign policy, economy and human rights code.
One need not doubt that the peoples of the European nations would never have agreed to the present EU construction if they had known or been told in advance where it was leading: to the bureaucratic institutional monster in Brussels and Frankfurt that now rules them in most things, and that has taken away from them their national democracy and independence.
For those pushing the European integration project have always been careful to avoid stating their goal frankly. They have been masters of the strategy of small steps. First pool Germany's and France's coal and steel to prevent another war. Then to get the full benefit of that, let us have a common market covering everything.
Then to get the full benefit of the Treaty of Rome, 1957, let us have a single internal market, with centrally imposed rules for goods, services, capital and labour. That gave us the Single European Act, 1987. Then to get the full benefit of that we need a single currency. That was Maastricht, 1992.
Then to get the full benefit of Maastricht we need a Union with legal personality, a common foreign and security policy and a common army. That was Amsterdam, 1998. Then to get the full benefit of that we need to bring in the poor East Europeans, while at the same time ensuring that they will not be able to outvote the big states, especially Germany and France.
That is the Treaty of Nice. The central objective of Nice is to empower an "inner core", with Germany and France at its head, to integrate further among themselves, as is not legally possible under the treaties now. That will formally open the way to a two-tier Europe, with the outer tier effectively dominated by the inner and compelled continually to bow to its political and economic faits accomplis.
Germany and France already speak openly of the next treaty after the Treaty of Nice. This will be the treaty to crown the federative edifice, to draw up a formal constitution for the EU superstate that is now more than half built, a modern Carolingian empire with the German chancellor and French president as its joint First Consuls.
Enlargement of the EU is still uncertain, for at heart the existing EU members do not want it. Or rather they want it and do not want it, at the same time. The Germans and French want it only if they can be certain they will dominate the two-tier Europe that must result. They have no intention of being outvoted by a cohort of poor easterners and southerners claiming formal equality with them as fellow EU "partners".
That is the reason for the recent Chirac-Schroder proposals for an EU constitution and a formal EU state.
Last May, in Berlin, the German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, called for "a transition from a union of states to full parliament arisation as a European Federation . . . And that means nothing less than a European Parliament and a European government which really do exercise legislative and executive power within the federation. This federation will have to be based on a constituent treaty."
The central issues of the InterGovernmental Council negotiations on the Treaty of Nice are:
(a) the reallocation of votes on the Council of Ministers in the event of EU enlargement, and
(b) whether a path can be agreed towards a two-tier EU by abolishing the present legal requirement for unanimity before an "inner core" can integrate further. In EU jargon this is known as "flexibility". "Flexibility" is the ratchet for further integration that allows federalising EU states to open up the ground on which they can later force the less enthusiastic ones.
In face of such giant issues - which envisage the establishment of a formal EU federal state - the Irish obsession with "keeping our EU Commissioner" seems pathetic.
The commissionership issue arises because at present the big states nominate two EU commissioners each, the small states one. The big states say they will give up their two on condition that the small states give them more votes on the Council of Ministers, with consequent greater leverage on all future EU legislation. That would be an extraordinarily unequal exchange.
EU commissionerships may be plum pieces of patronage with which governments can reward redundant national politicians. But once appointed, commissioners take an oath to serve the EU.
They are in no sense national delegates or representatives, although in countries with a clientalist political culture the existence of a Greek or Portuguese or Irish commissioner may be seen as a sign of national virility and being big players on the EU stage.
One need not doubt that to keep the small-country politicians and their populations happy, one commissioner for each state is the most likely outcome of the Nice negotiations.
Three other big issues will arise at Nice. One is more majority voting on the EU Council. That means reducing the national veto further, and with it democratic control by national parliaments. France has just proposed the introduction of qualified majority voting for 43 new policy areas, including some taxes.
The second is further moves towards militarising the EU by merging it with the nuclear-armed Western European Union.
The third is possible incorporation of the EU's draft Charter of Fundamental Rights into the treaties. If that happens it would make the EU's Court of Justice in Luxembourg the ultimate decider of the human rights of 350 million Europeans, as against their own national constitutions and supreme courts, and the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
All important issues. All worth debating. But going on the precedent of previous EU treaties, I for one am sceptical as to whether there will be much debate.
Anthony Coughlan is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin. He is secretary of The National Platform organisation and a board member of the European Anti-Maastricht Alliance, which links together some 40 European organisations on the left and right which are against further EU integration.