The Eurosceptic alarmists were at it again: "Do you want to see a United States of Europe? Do you want to see a single European government? Do you want to see political power centralised in Brussels? Do you want to see all major social and economic decisions made at European level by majority voting?"

This, presumably, was the kind of scaremongering the Taoiseach had in mind on Wednesday when he launched the Government's campaign in favour of the Nice Treaty. Attacking the opponents of Nice, he expressed the hope and belief that "the people will not be swayed by unfounded fears or reckless claims, many of which have been made before by the longstanding opponents of Irish membership of the EU and have time and again been proved to be false".

The only problem was that the lines just quoted didn't come from the Greens, Sinn Fein or the other opponents of the Nice Treaty. They are the opening sentences of an article by the Tanaiste, Mary Harney, in The Irish Times last September. These, she wrote, were "very important questions". We needed "a proper debate in Ireland about the issue of further European integration".

She accused our EU partners of being "wedded to an outmoded philosophy of high taxation and heavy regulation which condemns millions of their people to unemployment". She did not "want to see a situation in Ireland where we have to import the kind of job-destroying policies which are keeping millions of people on the dole right across continental Europe".

She repeated her earlier suggestion that "Ireland was spiritually closer to Boston than Berlin" and that "our economic success owes more to American liberalism than to European leftism."

Nor, at that time, was Mary Harney alone in expressing a degree of Euroscep ticism. Almost simultaneously, Sile de Valera was complaining that "directives and regulations agreed in Brussels can often seriously impinge on our identity, culture and traditions". She, too, stressed Ireland's closeness to the US and called for "a more vigilant, a more questioning attitude to the European Union".

She criticised the notion of greater European integration and warned that with EU enlargement "the emphasis will shift towards the east".

Bertie Ahern welcomed Sile de Valera's speech. Within a few months, moreover, this vaguely Eurosceptic rhetoric was given substance in the row over the EU Commission's formal reprimand of Charlie McCreevy's Budget.

Mary Harney went on Morning Ireland to paint the row as a cross between a small war and a big match: "I hope everyone wears the green jersey on this and stands together to defend our economic success."

Whatever the merits of the Boston-versus-Berlin argument or indeed of the Nice Treaty itself, all of this was hardly the best way to prepare the ground for a massive Yes vote in the forthcoming referendum.

If you want to remind the voting public, as the Taoiseach did on Wednesday, that "the transformation of our economy owes a great deal to the opportunities created by the single market and to our intelligent use of the funds received from the Union", painting the EU as an economic basket-case and a threat to our progress is hardly the best way to go about it.

Nor is it just the Government parties that have given ammunition to the opponents of Nice. John Bruton, then leader of Fine Gael, joined Bertie Ahern in insisting that having an Irish member of the Commission was a non-negotiable condition of participation in the EU. The Nice Treaty does away with that automatic right.

The Labour leader, Ruairi Quinn, described aspects of the Nice deal as "a disaster" and "an appalling setback". It is hardly surprising to find these words being quoted back at them in the debate.

The assumption in all of this seems to be that the public has a short memory and doesn't pay much attention to discussion of the EU. The public could be urged to pull on the green jersey and sing The Fields of Athenry in January and then to wrap itself in the EU flag and sing the Ode to Joy in May. Issues like the Irish seat on the Commission could be fundamental in 2000 and inconsequential in 2001.

Maybe the political leaders are right. Maybe the public doesn't take their pronouncements seriously enough to be influenced by them. Or maybe the downturn in the US economy and the realisation that being in the EU may be what saves us from recession might cause everyone to measure again our relative distance from Boston and Berlin. But if a confused electorate decides to stay at home or if the green jersey has stuck to the skin, the referendum result could turn out to be a shock.

In that case, the knowledge that the public did after all pick up on the signals they were sending a few months ago might be small consolation to Mary Harney, Sile de Valera and Charlie McCreevy.

fotoole@irish-times.ie