IRELAND’S tempestuous love affair with European treaty referendums is set for another date on 31 May.

That leaves eight long weeks of debate before the public votes on the fiscal compact treaty. Over the past two, ambassadors, academics, politicians and interest groups have presented their views on the treaty to a parliamentary subcommittee.

The meandering name of that body - the subcommittee on the referendum on the inter governmental treaty on stability, co-ordination and governance in the economic and monetary union - underlines the treaty’s complexity and the extent to which it’s seen as a turn-off. The Irish public have largely ignored the committee hearings and, with less than two months to go to polls, this has to be worrying for the government. John O’Brennan, director of European studies at NUI Maynooth, warned the committee on Wednesday (4APR) that there was only a “fragile majority” on the yes side.

An opinion poll for the Sunday Business Post at the end of March reported a 49% to 33% split in favour of the treaty. One earlier that month showed a 44% to 29% divide.

Undecided voters will yet again be crucial: 18% have yet to make up their minds.

Ireland has rejected two of the four European referendums put to voters over the course of the last decade. The Fine Gael-Labour coalition, now a year in office, has already lost a referendum - the public rejected a political reform poll last October. A hint of government complacency and a public overwhelmed by personal debt, rising unemployment and budget cuts could scupper the yes vote’s chances.

The Irish Central Bank published a study on Thursday which showed that Irish households have suffered the most severe wealth destruction in Europe.

Dan O’Brien in the Irish Times reported yesterday (6APR) that the net worth of Irish households has fallen by 35% since 2007, the 17th consecutive quarter of decline. And yet Ireland does not do protest. Greek-style demonstrations do not suit an Irish mindset weary of decades of Northern Ireland violence.

We are essentially a very conservative people. Nonetheless, there is a steady upswell of dissent building among the middle classes.

Declan Ganley, a leading no campaigner on the Lisbon treaty, hedged his bets before the parliamentary subcommittee when he said he was voting no, but added: “In this case, no means ‘maybe’.” He will only vote yes if his conditions are met - the introduction of a United States of Europe with a directly elected leadership and a eurobond backed by tax revenue across Europe.

Some chance. He believes the European Central Bank has “a moral duty to federalise that debt”, and that the treaty does nothing to solve Europe’s insolvency.

Eamon O’Cuiv, who resigned as deputy leader of the largest opposition party, Fianna Fail, in February after hinting that he would vote no on the treaty, holds similar views, but has very specific conditions. He has demanded the regulation of the banking and financial sector at a central European level and a commitment from the EU that there will be no further attempt to introduce non-elected technocratic governments in EU states. O’Cuiv also argued against tax harmonisation and proposed the ECB be reformed in order to act as a normal central bank with the ability to buy bonds from the sovereign directly.

Like Ganley, O’Cuiv believes the European banks that lent to Irish banks should assume their fair share of the losses that were caused by their “reckless behaviour, instead of saddling the debt on the Irish people”.

Watch and wait. A perfect storm is brewing, and it is called the European fiscal treaty.

(Dr Elaine Byrne is an adjutant lecturer in politics at Trinity College, Dublin and the author of Political Corruption in Ireland 1922-2010, A Crooked Harp)