I doubt if there is going to be either a fair or an adequate public debate on the hugely important Amsterdam Treaty referendum, for two reasons. The first is the Government's decision to hold the Amsterdam referendum on the same day as that on the Belfast Agreement, May 22. The cat was let out of the bag as to why this was this done, when an anonymous "Government spokesman" was quoted as saying that there had been representations from the European Commission urging that the referendum be held that day. The reason is so that the Irish vote before the Danes, whose referendum is six days later, on May 28. Brussels assumes that the Euro-enthusiastic Irish will say "yes" to Amsterdam, which in turn will put pressure on Denmark to do the same; for voters there just might say "no", as they did to Maastricht in 1992.
The Commission's "representations" may have amounted to no more than Mr Padraig Flynn or Commission President Santer making a phone call to the Taoiseach; but it was probably decisive. Smart politics, bad democracy, as The Irish Times editorial called it.
So despite the fact that "piggy-backing" the Amsterdam Treaty referendum on the back of that on the Belfast Agreement makes a considered debate on Amsterdam impossible; despite Minister Mary O'Rourke saying on radio that Amsterdam should be postponed; despite reports that Tanaiste Mary Harney and Foreign Minister Andrews thought the same, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern seems to have put Brussels' wishes first. And that despite the fact that the European Commission has no function whatever in the Treaty ratification process, which is the exclusive concern of the member states.
But there is a second, more fundamental, reason why the Irish people will not have a proper considered debate. It is because Irish opinion formers, and above all the Irish media and public policy-making elite, have failed utterly to date to inform the Irish public of the nature of the choice that is before them with regard to "Europe".
Any objective view of the development of the European Union up to now must conclude that each successive European treaty has been an incremental move of the original Common Market and the three European communities towards the establishment of a supranational federal European state.
The Amsterdam Treaty marks a significant and irrevocable step in this direction. This federal state to be, already named the European Union, was conceived in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and will come to term on the ratification of Amsterdam. It is, presumably, the intention of its promoters that it will grow into full maturity in subsequent treaties.
It is no longer tenable therefore to argue - as advocates of earlier European treaties have done - that each successive treaty is motivated solely by practical considerations of efficiency and economy in the relations between the member states, or is concerned mainly with free trade, structural funds, headage grants, CAP or what have you.
Whatever might be said for or against the European Union state-building project, it is surely self-evident that the transformation of a "sovereign, independent, democratic State" - which is how the Irish Constitution defines our Republic - into a constituent element of a federal union, is a change of such far-reaching implications that it should be considered and debated openly and honestly on its merits.
It would be a travesty of democratic principles - and of the very principles on which this Union asserts its aspiration to be founded - to allow this process to continue without a very clear and conscious decision in that regard by the people of Ireland and the other member states.
It is somewhat ironic in this context that Article 1 of the Amsterdam Treaty declares: "This Treaty marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizen."
So far as Ireland is concerned, this constitutional-revolution-by-instalments has taken place to date under the cloak of pragmatic arguments as to the economic benefits to be obtained from EC/EU membership, with little or no serious consideration of the long-term political and constitutional implications of the ultimate objective.
Those who have sought to draw attention to what is happening have tended to be dismissed as obscurantist, narrow nationalists or - a special category of contemporary Irish political offence - "bad Europeans"!
The McKenna judgement, the recent Referendum Act and the establishment of the present Referendum Commission, have in principle opened up the prospect of a more balanced and informed debate on the fundamental democratic choices that are involved in ratifying Amsterdam. Do we decide certain things ourselves, or do we hand over more power to decide them to others - decisions on what our human rights are, the right to control our State borders, to determine independently large areas of our civil and criminal law, to pursue an Irish rather than a European foreign and security policy, to resist closer links between the EU and the Western European Union military alliance, and much more?
Will the Irish media, Irish opinion-formers and the Referendum Commission's information campaign on the Amsterdam Treaty ensure that the people of Ireland are confronted, for the first time, with a very clear choice as to whether or not to proceed with the full project of full federal integration?
A federal European Union state has never been openly canvassed before the Irish electorate. Yet that undeniably is what is in train. It matters little whether the Amsterdam Treaty is a large or definitive step in that direction. It is an integral part of the federal European state-building project, such that acceptance of the Treaty would make no sense unless the Irish people were in fact willing in principle to proceed to the ultimate destination.
I am doubtful whether the Irish people will be so alerted. The Government's decision to hold the Amsterdam referendum on the same day as that on the Northern peace deal, with which most people understandably are primarily concerned, makes it virtually impossible. If there were to be a reaction amongst our media to the political cynicism involved, or amongst our more independent-minded intelligentsia, perhaps it might just be possible. One lives in hope.
The Belfast Agreement, which is so full of hope for Ireland, in fact gives extra urgency to the need to alert people to what is happening vis-a-vis the EU. The Northern Agreement promises a reconciliation and closer relation between the people of this island; but that development will inevitably be affected by the process of European integration.
It is a remarkable twist of political fate that at the very moment when an historical rapprochement is being consummated between Ireland and Britain, a major currency barrier, which presages much else, is being erected across Ireland by means of the South's decision to join EMU on its own.
It would obviously be conducive to bringing North and South closer together that Ireland and the UK should co-ordinate their respective attitudes to the process of European integration and proceed in tandem with regard to it. Is this the time for Dublin to be drawing a new economic partition across Ireland, and helping to solidify it constitutionally by ratifying the Treaty of Amsterdam and the special provisions that it makes for the eurozone countries?
I suggest that this factor alone is sufficient to warrant the postponement of the Republic's ratification of the Amsterdam Treaty, and of our entry next January into the eurozone bloc, until the North-South implications of these developments have been considered by the new institutions to be established under the Belfast Agreement.
Anthony Coughlan is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at Trinity College, Dublin. He is secretary of the National Platform, a non-party group which is opposed the European state-building project on democratic and internationalist grounds.