This week you will be asked to vote on ... It’s Referendum time again. Three of them, no less, proposing changes to the Irish Constitution to abolish capital punishment, the International Criminal Court and changes arising from the treaty of Nice.

These are not mere legal scribblings. They are important and should be considered carefully. I know we all have our views on the way Irish democracy works or not, but we still have a democratic duty to fulfil. I mean, we don’t get this opportunity in Northern Ireland, do we? Or in the UK. So, it’s a hard-won right. It should be used.

Actually, the first two are pretty transparent and straightforward. There will be a few mountain men who want to retain the death penalty. But on the whole, most of us don’t. So, if that’s the way you feel, vote yes.

But it’s with the third referendum that controversy arises. There are several general intentions in this - ratifying the Treaty of Nice is the covering concept. But that

Treaty contains a range of changes and statements that bear examination.

There are obvious bits, like enlargement. The intention is to expand the European Union eastwards, bringing various countries on board, as they are ready. The most likely candidates at the moment are Poland, the Czech Republic, one or two of the Baltic States, Hungary and Bulgaria. These places are quite a ways behind the Western European economies… just as were we, the Portuguese, the Greeks and the Southern Italians oh, ten years ago, and less.

So, do we want to include them? Do we want them to share in economic and social benefits? Do we want them to benefit as we have done? Are we willing to pay for this as the Germans and the Dutch paid for us?

The Hungarians, Czechs and Poles are very interested in our decision – they see us holding almost a life and death power over their hopes for economic development.

Well, that might be a bit steep. They may prove to be like the Greeks who, lovely people as they are, have not made anything like the same use of the European funds as the Irish and the Portuguese. We could be throwing money down a black hole.

But the debate involved many other issues, such as the Rapid Reaction Force and ‘neutrality’. The Nice Treaty brings this force under the direct control of the European Union’s institutions. Opponents claim that the Treaty will end Irish neutrality (by which I think they actually mean military non-alignment – we are neutral in no other sense) and will involve the Irish in the RRF. Among those plugging that line are Sinn Féin and the Peace and Neutrality Alliance. Not so say proponents – any such activity would have to be approved by the Government and that seems to be the case from the wording of the referendum.

There is another, wider issue on Europe as well, and it is to do with the complex, very important but shockingly boring question of how Europe is to be governed and administered. The Nice declaration named five ‘issues’ in this, and more are likely to be added. Some voices are already in the field. Like the German Foreign Minister Joshua Fischer, and the French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

Both have managed to annoy the Irish. We may be tempted to show them the two fingers.

Well citizen, it’s not a simple yes and no matter. And I’m not going to help!! What you have to do is go find out. And vote.

Mind you, to vote you’ve to be sober and together and in the same place as your voting card directs. Which might be beyond the capacity of some of our students, if comments at a recent conference organised by the Higher education Authority are to be taken at face value.

According to Emmet Oliver in the Irish Times, Doctor Don Thornhill, chairman of the Higher Education Authority suggested that excessive drinking may be causing ‘the alarming, dropout rates in some colleges’.

His grounds for this were that ‘information from campuses indicated that students were expending “a significant proportion of their time and money “on alcohol’.

He then, apparently said that the Republic’s consumption of beer, the drink most favoured by young people, was the highest in the EU. But is it? Don’t the Germans drink more beer? Certainly the Czechs do. And we have one of the lowest rates of consumption of wine, Bridget Jones and Chardonnay notwithstanding. Besides, when I was a student I, and most of my companions, got drunk on (as opposed to drank) wine.

But this is typical of the risk-factor dominated thinking that we get all the time. The Irish, like all Northern Europeans and also Central Europeans, are heavy beer drinkers. But they don’t drink a lot of wine, compared to Mediterranean populations. On the whole, we’re pretty average when you add it all up. But nobody does. The tabloid headline approach is easier.

Of greater importance is the degree to which this statement dodged the systematic reasons why students might drop out. The points system has a lot to answer for. But above all, as the recent critical report in DIT makes clear, so too do the colleges and universities. I mean – why blame the customers?? In business, the customer is always right… When the hell are we going to adopt that view in higher education? b

The Hog