In the swirl of analysis and recriminations which surround the result of the Nice referendum, certain erroneous views can be taken for fact, unless corrected immediately.
One such erroneous view is that farmers who abstained from voting in the referendum would have saved the Nice Treaty, had they come out. I contend that the opposite is the case.
As a farmer, and as someone who has campaigned among farmers for many years, I have noticed the erosion of support for Europe. Many farmers had decided to call a halt to the damage now being done to agriculture and the loss of their own self-reliance, but in deference to past loyalties could not bring themselves to vote No this time.
The contradictions inherent in the EU came home to roost in the Nice Treaty. Farmers have indeed benefited from the payments from Europe over the years but they have also been manoeuvred into giving up control of much of their business.
A date on a form now dictates when they can sell their animals, while the price they receive is decided by meat factories and multinational companies. Many farmers resent having to rely on a cheque in the post from Brussels for their profit.
They know from negotiations in Brussels that the budget for the Common Agricultural Policy cannot be increased, but a review will start next year. Ratification of the Nice Treaty would introduce qualified majority voting for the Economic and Cohesion Fund immediately, and on the Structural Fund from 2007. And then they are told to give millions of farmers in the applicant countries the same chance that we got. Mr Tom Parlon and Mr Joe Walsh were unable to solve this contradiction when asked to do so.
In the run-up to the referendum, the Commission was unable to supply accurate figures on the numbers of farmers in the applicant countries, but inquiries secured estimates that "enlargement will double the agricultural workforce and increase the area of agricultural land by 50 per cent".
This all gave the impression that the Commission and governments had not made any preparations for the impact enlargement will have on agriculture.
Farmers cannot allow for such a luxury of uncertainty. In farming, one is always planning several years ahead. Our farmers were told they were getting access to a market of 180 million consumers, but exchanging access to the 320 million consumers (with much higher spending power) which they had already did not sound a fair deal, especially when the cheap labour costs and scale of the applicant countries were factored in.
Irish farmers refused to buy a pig in a poke. They had already been persuaded to do that in the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties, when they were promised effective controls would be introduced throughout Europe to make up for the removal of border health and safety checks.
The warnings of No campaigners and the veterinary unions at the time were dismissed. The result has been an increase in imported exotic diseases, and the disasters of BSE and foot-and-mouth.
The response of the Irish Government and the Commission is to load even more regulations and paper work on farmers while ignoring the basic causes of the spread of these diseases.
Farmers are being asked to carry the cost of food safety crises which are often caused by problems outside the farm gate.
They are buried under a mountain of labelling and traceability requirements, while being forced into competition with huge quantities of produce imported from outside Europe of unknown origin and dubious safety standards.
Dr Pat Wall of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has warned several times that this approach was not sustainable and risked creating a backlash. I believe that part of this backlash has emerged in the Nice Treaty vote.
It has been further encouraged by the mishandling of schemes such as the Special Areas of Conservation, and the sudden change in switching payments from a headage-based system to an area based one.
The former placed restrictions on farming practices while the latter reduced the direct income of over 28,500 farmers. Both schemes had been agreed between the Government and the Commission, without sufficient consultation with farmers.
Meanwhile, Teagasc issued a report which predicted that less than a quarter of the current 120,000 full-time farmers would survive in the near future.
This was accepted without protest by many of the people who were urging them to vote Yes. We surely would not expect turkeys to vote for Christmas.
Enlargement will have a huge impact on Irish farmers, yet the Nice Treaty does not deal directly with agriculture. Such contradictions ensured that farmers did not come out to vote. I believe that had they done so, they would have voted No.
Noel Giles is the managing director of Clohane Consultancy Company, which specialises in agriculture and food issues, in the European and Irish context, with an emphasis on health, environmental, and social aspects. He advised various components of the No campaign.