Well the hour is almost upon us and the broadcasting imbargo has kicked in. Kind of makes the TV & radio rather bland after increasingly hysterical discourses dominated the airwaves in recent days. If ever I needed convincing, I was persuased of Europe’s great healing power this week. I had to stand back and applaud Prionsais De Rossa and Garret Fitzgerald (on different ocassions). Prionsais gave a tour de force on newstalk on Monday night and Garret the good gave an octogenarian opus in defence of the treaty on Vincent Browne last night. His elderly academic manner lent even greater gravitas to his delivery and to complete the circle his flow was fulsome with praise for former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

Going back over the arguments of the closing days, at this stage the No camp have been exposed on almost every issue. One after the other neutrality, abortion, taxation have been exposed as red herrings protected in copperplate and the latest wheeze has been a PR onslaught to grab the nation’s attention with some gimmicks towards the end of campaigning.

Ganley presented a set of three RyanAir tickets outside government buildings the other day, apparently ready for Gilmore, Kenny and Cowen to “fly back to Brussels and bring home a better deal”.. Well I’ve news for Ganley and his cohorts, the last deal wasn’t signed in Brussels, it was done in Dublin, and under an Irish presidency. After a series of kicking to touch as the talks moved across Europe every six months (incidentally just on example of the kind of instability the Lisbon treaty will address) the Irish EU presidency was hailed as a diplomatic triumph. Largely thanks to the legendary negotiating skills of Bertie Ahern, who along with the best of the Irish civil service, facilitated and delivered a deal that not only won agreement across Europe but also ensured the best possible outcome for Ireland across a whole range of issues. In particular, many of the issues which were agreed in principle at Nice, such as reduction in the commissioner numbers, had extremely favourable terms negotiated for Ireland and the smaller countries, on a purely equal basis, no mean feat from completely unequal population share and contribution ratios. On top of that the talks had been in progress for almost 7 years and across 27 different countries, so of necessity a compromise was produced but one which we literally drove from the top table. Oh and not only did we chair the talks but we had Pat Cox as the president of the European Parliament at the time, a planetary alingnment that won’t be seen again in our lifetime, I’ll warrant. Quite frankly if Ganley thinks a “better deal” can be struck, he’s living in cloud cuckoo land.

Of course he knows this too, and the whole Libertas agenda is very suspect. Unelected, previously unheard of campaigners, all suffering from a sudden outbreak of civic conscience and with links to the US military. Oh and spending more than the combined mainstream political parties put together, yet no admission where the funding is coming from. The SIPO donor returns which are mandatory disclosure after the poll should make interesting reading.

At the least the Cóir people have a longstanding agenda (even if their posters are complete sensationalism) and the various left and/or republican movements have been around for a while everyone knows where they’re coming from. Having said that, very few of the politicos on the No side have ever been succesful electorally, despite attempts in most cases, begging the question for them and the rest, why they can be taken seriously on Europe but rarely on anything else.

Anyways rant over for today. I think it will be close but I think the Ayes have it. We’ll see on Friday.

Oh lastly credit to my friend and fellow blogger Paul Browne for finally going political. All those coffee point canvasses must have had an effect somehow – he’s on the case over here.