The strange saga of the Nice Referendum is winding its way to a close. The Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA) held its last press conference yesterday and yours truly was the only journalist in attendance.
Perhaps it is time to consider a less isolated way of passing the time than covering the Nice campaign. Maybe there are some lighthouses which have not yet gone automatic or there might be vacancies for night watchmen at the North Pole.
The late lamented Prof Augustine Martin, or Gus as we called him in University College Dublin, used to joke that, "The reason academic politics are so bitchy is because the stakes are so low." Perhaps the reason the Nice campaign is so flaccid is that the stakes are so high.
Indeed the stakes could hardly be higher. In the Blue corner we have the Future of Europe; in the Green corner, Ireland's National Independence.
The Future of Europe's seconds are called Enlargement and Expanded Markets. The seconds for Irish National Independence are known as Sovereignty and Self-Determination.
A very serious-minded colleague who spent most of his life covering the Dail told me that if the backbenchers on each side were switched around, a fair number of them would not even notice the difference.
It is not nice, particularly in these politically correct times, to label any group in the community, no matter how privileged, as stupid. Maybe a few backbenchers in Leinster House are, shall we say, intellectually challenged, but I prefer to think our elitist political culture is at fault.
In Denmark, for example, there is a vigorous European Affairs Committee which calls ministers sharply to account and keeps an assertively critical eye on every jot and tittle of European business as it affects the country.
The Oireachtas has an admirable committee with the same name under the capable chairmanship of Mr Bernard Durkan TD, but its power and influence is minor compared to its Danish counterpart and it gets very little media attention.
In Ireland, European business is largely a matter for the mandarins and the relevant minister. People on both sides will bemoan a tight result in Thursday's vote but it should at least bring home the necessity to inform and educate the public better on European issues.
We might not then have the Minister for Foreign Affairs complaining, as he has consistently done throughout this campaign, that misinformation was being peddled by the No side, especially on the issue of neutrality.
The PANA people refused to retreat yesterday from their claim that the treaty and its accompanying documentation will put us in bed with NATO and one of them quoted a senior British politician who described the EU's Rapid Reaction Force as "NATO without the Americans'.
In an editorial yesterday, the Financial Times described the anti-Nice campaign as "a ragged group of Greens, socialists, pacifists and Sinn Fein". PANA chairman Roger Cole found this mildly amusing, since he had donned his best suit and an unseasonal Crombie overcoat for the press conference.
The one element of the informal coalition which the FT omitted to mention was the No to Nice campaign, which includes a fair number of people who stand for traditional Catholic values, most notably the former High Court judge, Mr Roderick O'Hanlon.
This is a very angry group at the moment, following the Taoiseach's claim about the sources of their funding. They firmly insisted they were getting no money from abroad, including the US, and announced their intention of seeking a court injunction against him this morning.
The No to Nice group has kept a relatively low media profile but claims to have been active on the ground with posters and door-to-door canvassing. It claims that the Irish Times/MRBI poll understated the opposition to Nice because the question about voting intentions mentioned enlargement.
No to Nice says it favours enlargement, the issue was the terms of the treaty. It also believes private opinion polls are telling the powers that be the true extent of the No vote.
The fax machines are cranking out statements and today there is a plethora of press conferences. Both sides are pressing their case with last-minute zeal, but time is running out. At this stage the referendum is like Roddy McCorley at the Bridge of Toome: too late, too late are they.