BY FAR the biggest lie in the Lisbon Treaty referendum debate is the 'Yes' side's lie about what we will gain by a 'Yes' vote and lose by a 'No' vote. The lie is based on a carefully constructed and deliberate confusion of the European Union and the Lisbon Treaty, for both of which we are told we are voting. It is not so.

This lie has spawned speeches, posters, declarations and arguments. Virtually the whole policy approach to the Referendum of the two parties in power and the two main parties in opposition relies on false premises and direct falsehoods, the first of which is that the two are one.

If we reject the Lisbon Treaty we reject the European Union. Many wise and powerful leaders in Europe, including the prime minister of Sweden, who is currently EU president, as well as a former president of France, have dismissed this idea as rubbish, which undoubtedly it is. The two are in fact quite separate.

If we pass the referendum it will change the EU in quite radical if not revolutionary ways. If we do not pass it, we will go on as before. Going on as before is an Irish occupation.

It means we will continue in our present state within the EU, not specially favoured, not taken special notice of, not more at the heart of Europe than we were, but legally as much part of the EU as we have been throughout the past 35 years.

That is what democracy means. It meant that at the time of the first referendum, last year. It has always meant that and we should treasure it, not throw it away.

In a recent article in this newspaper, the distinguished former Irish diplomat, Michael Lillis, wrote that a 'No' vote will lead to no legal consequences: "Ireland will not be expelled from the present European Union, nor is there any legal mechanism to sanction or disadvantage us, nor will we be drummed into a second tier of membership below our present legal status."

This is totally different from the dark forebodings of the 'Yes' vote campaign leaders.

He confirms what others outside Ireland have been saying since before the first referendum and are repeating now. He might also have dealt with the blandishments, including those about jobs.

Judge Frank Clark tried to do this. He suggested that the claim about the Lisbon Treaty providing jobs was "a political opinion" and he could not comment on that.

All he could say, rather timidly, was that it was not in the Lisbon Treaty. Truth demanded more than that.

Brian Cowen thinks jobs are in the Lisbon Treaty, adding that a 'Yes' vote "would be a great statement by the country about where we want to go".

Yet the Lisbon Treaty has nothing in it about where Ireland wants to go and Brian Cowen has very little to say on the subject. His worries are about where we have been.

Lisbon Treaty decisions are the opposite of what Ireland wanted when we negotiated the treaty and failed to get what we wanted.

Brian Cowen regards the vote on October 2 as Ireland "making it very clear to other member states of the European Union that we want to be part of reforming the union". The decision does the opposite.

It hands over future control, undermining our veto, our vote and our choice of Commissioner.

It makes the EU less elective, less democratic.

It relieves it of Irish interference sidelining us.

To control our destiny within Europe and help other countries control theirs, we should vote 'No', keeping all European options open, and doing so, according to Michael Lillis, would not result in any self-inflicted damage.

We would be exercising the prize that the European Union -- at least, historically speaking -- placed above all other prizes.

This was the democracy so abused during the rise of European dictatorships, led by Hitler and Mussolini.

No 'Yes' vote leader has explained how democracy will work under the Lisbon Treaty. That has been a function of the 'No' side, pointing out our vote will be less, we will not propose our Commissioner, we will lose the veto on most things and turn our backs on the better democratic deal we have under the Nice Treaty.

This will remain in force if the 'No' vote succeeds.

Otherwise we end up with Tony Blair's five-year term as president of Europe, the man who led the West into the disastrous and dishonest war in Iraq, purveying false allegations shamelessly. So much for Ireland's sacredly enshrined protocols.

Michael Lillis's fear, which takes up four-fifths of last week's article, is that Ireland will fall under the sway of Britain again -- what he describes as "the pre-1973 cauldron of Anglo-Irish claustrophobia and dependence".

Garret FitzGerald shares that irrational fear, notwithstanding our different currencies and the clear statements Lillis made about the unchanging nature of our post-Lisbon vote status in most things.

So we need to vote 'Yes' in order to frustrate a plot designed to put us once more under British control? What absurdity is this? Do we have so little national confidence that we are afraid of making a suicidal social and economic return to the 1950s?

We need to grow up a bit. We don't need to exchange what we got rid of, in 1921, for a new kind of supreme, external rule.

Ireland did not grow in economic strength because the country, in the words of an editorial writer in the Wall Street Journal, "sucked on the teat of EU regional aid for two-and-a-half decades".

Though we did do that, it had little or no effect, as those who lived through the turbulent times of the 1970s and 1980s will know.

Ireland's economic strength derived from tax reform, with the slashing of capital gains and corporate income-tax rates. Bertie Ahern then undermined this valuable set of reforms.

Now Brian Cowen tells us he doesn't have the stomach for the fresh tax reform we need.