YES CAMPAIGN REACTION:FIANNA FÁIL last night rebuffed criticisms from Fine Gael about alleged shortcomings in its Lisbon Treaty campaign.
In the first signs of a "blame game" over the negative result, former Fine Gael leader Michael Noonan and the party's Dublin South East TD Lucinda Creighton both said the Government had started its campaign too late.
Mr Noonan said the change of leadership in Fianna Fáil had proved to be a distraction.
He said all of Fianna Fáil's attention had been on the change of leader and Brian Cowen's election as Taoiseach. "Rather than getting into the campaign immediately, he went on this extended lap of honour and they didn't really come down to brass tacks until two weeks ago - and then it was gone," he added.
But a senior Fianna Fáil source last night responded by saying that the Fianna Fáil campaign had started in earnest last January and that the party had distributed millions of leaflets and brochures.
"Enda Kenny was the only one of the three leaders who did not deliver a Yes vote in his constituency," added the sources.
The Taoiseach rejected any criticism that Fianna Fáil had been too late out of the traps. Speaking at the press conference in Dublin Castle last night, he said his party had conducted an intense campaign, but accepted that the Yes side had clearly failed to communicate their message well enough.
Suggesting the reasons for the defeat were myriad, he said: "The fact is that allied to that there was an orchestrated campaign of confusion on the No side as well."
Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said there was a disconnection between the EU institutions and its people. Social issues, he said, were significant in terms of the defeat. He identified abortion and militarisation as two key issues, despite the copper-fastened assurances of Government.
Former European Parliament president Pat Cox suggested a number of factors for the defeat and identified the "unspoken" issue of immigration.
"Some of it is about Lisbon. Some of it is about the state of the economy. Some is on the recent state of politics. To disentangle all that is difficult."
Fine Gael enterprise spokesman Leo Varadkar was in no doubt that the race card had been quietly played by elements of the No side. "It was about immigration. All the way along that was the elephant in the room that nobody spoke about. Some of the No campaign used xenophobia," he said.
Mr Varadkar was highly critical of the Referendum Commission. He described the information campaign as "absolutely appalling" and something that needed to be closely looked at. Fianna Fáil Minister of State Noel Ahern was also critical of the commission, and said funds spent on the information campaign had been a waste.
He was one of a number of pro-Lisbon TDs who told The Irish Timesthe main problem the Yes side had was a tangible message.
"It was very hard to sell it. We lacked one big thing about Lisbon that people would understand and grasp."
