John Linklater in Ardara, south-west Donegal
IN the run-up to tomorrow's referendum Mary Brennan has a problem. It is the duty frees. They are saying that a Yes vote will do away with them.
She is not particularly happy about all this interference from Brussels and the prospect of the Irish Republic becoming a mere province of Europe.
This is not a complete aberration over the terms of the Good Friday peace agreement. On Mary's part it is more a question of priorities. In the Republic tomorrow the electorate are voting on two separate referendums, and Mary is more concerned about the implications of a Yes to ratify the Amsterdam Treaty on EU membership, the single European Act, and the Treaty on European Union.
In the lazy south-west Donegal village of Ardara, an L-shape of largely two-storey buildings that straddles the mouth of the River Owentucker as it makes its unflustered way to the Atlantic, the pulse of life is as slow as one of the shuttle looms that made it the centre of the earliest Donegal Tweed business.
Here among the green Donegal hills things flow too easily to get over-exercised about the complexities of the politics of the North. If there is an invitation to vote for peace, the attitude is there doesn't seem to be much need for debate.
Besides, Donegal has a way of confusing the issue. It remains one of the nine counties of the original province of Ulster. The only bank in Ardara is, in fact, the Ulster Bank. Donegal also makes a geographical nonsense of the north-south political divide in Ireland, which is why it treats it with such relaxed scepticism. Not only is Ardara farther north than Belfast, the north-east Donegal village of Ballygorman is farther north than anywhere in Northern Ireland, looking out placidly on the Inishtrahull Sound above Logh Foyle, closer to Campbeltown than Belfast.
This may give Donegal its own slant on the Agreement that has never been picked up in any multi-party negotiations.
Mary is perplexed by the amount of reading material that has landed on her doorstep since the weekend from the Referendum Commission.
The complaint in the North is that they have not had enough objective guidance on how to interpret the Agreement document's arcane language. In the Republic the complaint is they have been given too much.
The cover of the Republic version of the Agreement text is much more prosaic. It is a white-covered pamphlet in both the English and Irish language editions. Its title page is terse: Agreement Reached in the Multi-Party Negotiations. The Northern Ireland A4-size production has a colour photograph of a family of four silhouetted against a kind of Celtic twilight (which may or may not be a significant backdrop).
The title, in three different type-faces, proclaims: ''The Agreement - This Agreement Is About Your Future - Please Read It Carefully - It's Your Decision''.
The back-up material in the Republic is extensive and glossier. There is a summary document and a separate brochure presenting the arguments for and against the Agreement, based on public responses to the April 10 text to the Referendum Commission, an independent body in Dublin set up by Statute to put forward fair and balanced statements for the guidance of voters. Presumably in Northern Ireland any such Commission would still be receiving the bickerings of the parties over an agreed form of words.
The saving grace in Ardara is that nobody can be found who has actually read the material. The apparent apathy has prompted an advertising campaign on Donegal Highland Radio. The low turnouts in recent referendums and elections does not encourage expectations, and yesterday's Donegal People's Press carried a headline urging the county's 15,500 young people to exercise their first vote.
However, the same newspaper does not give coverage to the referendum until Page 6, after dealing with the bigger issues of a boy injured by a steel goalpost that fell on him during a game of football, a water shortage, a new wind energy project, and a job loss of 10 in a local textile factory.
The big news on the referendum campaign (in which all political parties are supporting a Yes vote) is that the Minister for Tourism, Dr Jim McDaid, was criticised for distributing Yes leaflets outside St Eunan's Cathedral in Letterkenny.
Residents protested that he had created a ''terrible state'' of litter in the car park when motorists came out of Mass to peel the literature from their windscreens.
That Mary Brennan should be at one with the motorists of Letterkenny on the leafleting overkill is mildly surprising. She belongs to the fifth generation of the family to run the Brennan's Hotel at The Diamond, the market junction in the centre of the village of Ardara.
Hoteliers and the entire tourist industry, poised to become the Republic's biggest employer when it overtakes agriculture, are supposed to have the greatest investment in peace in the North.
Not necessarily in South-west Donegal. Farther down the road, Mary O'Donnell runs a small general store and reckons that 70% of her tourist clientele are Northern Ireland Protestants.
They buy holiday homes in the area. There is no record of friction with the local community, who are happpy to extend a welcome. The implication is that peace might reduce this trade, though nobody would support this as grounds for a No vote.
''It has to be Yes,'' says Mary O'Donnell. ''It will pave the way for a united Ireland, but not in the next twenty or thirty years. I look forward to that.
''We are still an invaded country. It is our country and they are still there.''
This is certainly not part of the rhetoric of the Agreement which is expected to secure a 71% endorsement when polling closes at 10pm tomorrow night in the Republic.
The crux is in the amendment to Article 2 of the Constitution which declares a legal claim to the the ''national territory'' of the whole of Ireland. Under the Agreement this will be replaced by a form of words that defines Irish nationhood in terms of its peoples rather than territory. Article 3 will now propose, in the Refererendum Commission's simplified translation of the Agreement text: ''It is the will of the Irish Nation, in harmony and friendship, to unite all the people who share the territory of the island of Ireland.
''United Ireland shall only be brought about by peaceful means with the consent of the majority of the people, democratically expressed in both jurisdicitions in the island.''
The Commission's interpretation of these crucial amendments is that it removes the constitutional obligation on the Irish government to pursue unification.
The objection, outlined in the Commission's argument against the Agreement, is that this effectively confers a right of veto on a united Ireland, so long as Unionists are a majority in Northern Ireland. The suspicion is that, if the Dublin Commission could circulate this argument to the homes of Ulster loyalists, the Yes vote in Northern Ireland might be considerably higher than the current predictions of around 60%.
The village of Ardara looks set to take it all in its easy stride, regardless of the outcome. Across the two main streets there is festive bunting out in the traditional Donegal colours of green and gold. Your reporter inquired if this was in anticipation of a historic referendum result. The answer was given with gentle politeness. No, it was ready to celebrate the much bigger event of the annual Ardara Fair, starting the weekend after this.
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