Ireland's 'unhappy' vote for EU pact

2 Jun 2012, 10:18 am   -   Source: AAP
Ireland's Prime Minister Enda Kenny. (Getty)

Ireland's Prime Minister Enda Kenny. (Getty)

Three out of five Irish voters have backed an EU deficit-fighting pact, but there is acknowledgment that many did so with reluctance.

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Even as the Irish governing coalition celebrated its victory in the EU fiscal stability pact referendum, there was acknowledgment that many had voted "yes" reluctantly.

There was a "yes" vote of 60.3 per cent in favour of ratification of the EU stability pact, while 39.7 per cent voted against it.

"There were a lot of unhappy yes voters and even more unhappy no voters," said Labour Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton, who campaigned for a "yes" vote with Labour's senior partner in government Fine Gael.

"The message to us as a government is that we have to start the dialogue with Europe again," she said on Friday.

"So many people have suffered huge losses over the last few years. We will start working again tomorrow for the people who are unemployed and the families whose incomes have suffered."

Mary Lou MacDonald, deputy leader of the nationalist Sinn Fein party, which spearheaded the no campaign against what it dubbed the "austerity treaty," said fear motivated many yes voters.

"A lot of people went to the polling station feeling they didn't have a choice. People were very fearful. I know the fear factor was there especially after Finance Minister Michael Noonan threatened that there would be even tougher budgets after a no vote," she said.

The finance minister was accused of scaremongering after he warned that if there was a no vote "the budget I'll be planning for later in the year will be dramatically more difficult".

"If people think that by voting no they'll avoid further tax cuts and increases, actually a no vote will do the opposite," he said.

Noonan repeatedly warned that Ireland could run into funding difficulties if it voted no, excluding itself from the European Stability Mechanism, the EU's emergency bailout fund.

Ireland received an EU/IMF bailout in 2010 and may require more emergency funding in 2014 if it proves impossible to go back to the markets after its bailout funding runs out in 2013.

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