While the rest of us enjoy the dubious charms of Fair City, spend quality time with our families or just plain enjoy ourselves, the Lisbonites spend their evenings debating the triple lock and low-rate corporation tax.

The Government, meanwhile, has been doing its best to convince us that we're not really due to hold a referendum to amend the Constitution next month. Bertie was being characteristically vague on details relating to the Lisbon referendum and was certainly not being forthright about relevant information, like the wording of it.

In the past, the Government ground out a victory in EU referendums by boring voters into submission and scaring them about the dire consequences of upsetting Europe by voting 'No'. But, in recent times, a combination of really low turnouts and the electorate's tendency to use referendums to give the Government a kicking means victory is far from certain.

When it comes to European referendums, the Irish electorate is looked upon as the uncle who likes a drink and whose party piece involves playing the tin whistle with his nostril. The Government is the uptight, nouveau-riche couple staging their dream wedding, complete with flourishes like a carriage pulled by a pair of white rhinos. But they don't want dipso uncle around. If the Government had its way, it would treat us like that black-balled uncle and tell us about the referendum after the event: "Oh that! We had that last month. You didn't miss much. Very boring! You can't trust the post these days. We sent you an invite and all. Byeeee!"

The Lisbon Treaty was signed by all the EU heads of state in Portugal last December, but it wasn't until mid-April that Bertie actually confirmed the vote would be held here on Thursday, June 12.

Bertie's Dail comments to confirm the vote date were as vague as the vaguest man in Vaguesville: "While we haven't formalised a decision, it would seem to me that Thursday, June 12 is probably the most appropriate date . . . We haven't made a formal decision, but we have everything in place now."

His attempts at explaining the complicated legalistic doorstopper that is the Lisbon Treaty haven't been too successful. He said recently it was needed "to streamline the institutional framework" and give the EU "a better opportunity to act on a broader international stage".

As well as the half-hearted waffle, Bertie handed the poisoned chalice of tempting us to vote 'Yes' to Dick Roche, a guy he had just demoted from a full ministry.

Now there's a vote of confidence.

It's become so disconnected from the electorate that one UCD academic, Professor Richard Sinnott, recently suggested that it was the Government's duty to make these EU polls boring.

"The objection," he said, "may be raised that people would become bored with the issue. This is wrong-headed. EU treaty changes should not be exciting and, if they are, they are probably bad. So a bit of boredom may be a good thing and should not cause people to stay at home."

If that wasn't enough encouragement to stay at home, the off-the-wall stunts dreamt up by the opposition parties who support the Lisbon Treaty certainly will.

Munster Fine Gael MEP Colm Burke came up with the notion that the key to winning the Lisbon vote is to target hairdressers. Apparently, Colm had his eureka moment as he was getting his hair cut in Cork.

"The hairdresser told me she was voting 'No' to the Lisbon Treaty because it would bring in a new regime about the number of children she could have," he said.

The MEP has distributed treaty information to more than 250 hairdressers in Cork city and county, and he feels it's the right place to leaf through dense EU legalese.

"Everyone visits one and usually reads a magazine or whatever is lying around while they are waiting to have their hair cut," he added.

Pardon the pun, but Colm must be part of the 'Yes' campaign's lunatic fringe if he thinks this will work. The Lisbon Treaty is so dense it would face stiff competition from a five-year-old National Geographic, or even the most dog-eared copy of Hello!

The 'Yes' campaign is under pressure and it's not just because of hare-brained individual ideas such as blitzing barbers. Bertie's resignation and his ongoing tribunal troubles have also hindered the Government's campaign.

All this uncertainty has left the field open for the 'No' side to campaign vigorously.

The 'No' campaign is a really apt name because "No!" is the first word most of us scream when we see the usual suspects such as Anthony Coughlan and Patricia McKenna pop up.

Most of them look like characters from Eighties footage on Reeling in the Years, somehow teleported to 2008. Anti-war campaigners, anti-European businessmen in pinstripe suits, religious fanatics, extreme Republicans and Trotskyites are all in our faces calling for a 'No' vote.

To borrow Tommy Tiernan's line about everyone having an Auntie Mary, everyone on the 'No' side has an anti-something story.

For a refugee from the Eighties, a European referendum campaign is one of the few places they'd feel at home in our much-changed country. We've been having European referendums for 36 years now, and each time we play the yes/no game show, all that happens is the turnout gets lower, the electorate gets more disillusioned and the arguments become more cliched.

Our referendum roll-call sounds like an old-fashioned range of Ford cars. There's been the Maastricht, the Amsterdam, the Nice, the Nice Mark II and now the Lisbon.

The first European referendum in Ireland in 1972 was the biggie because it was about Ireland joining the EEC. Back then, the electorate thought it was the only time we'd ever have to vote on Europe, so they turned out in their droves. The turnout was more than 70 per cent and the 'Yes' vote won it by five to one, despite dire warnings from the 'No' camp. Among the most colourful 'No' vote campaigners was War of Independence veteran Tom Barry, who urged people to "keep us out of the cesspool of Europe".

If Old IRA man Tom was alive today it would be hard to convince him we haven't sunk into the cesspool, having become a nation of frothy-coffee-drinking ponces who've sent a turkey to the Eurovision.

A 1987 court challenge is to blame for the fact that every time the EU is tinkered with, we have to hold a referendum to ratify it.

Academic Raymond Crotty challenged the constitutionality of the Single European Act, which was due to be ratified by the Oireachtas. The Supreme Court ruled that we had to have a referendum on each new EU treaty. After all that rigmarole, there was only a 44 per cent turnout for the subsequent referendum, with 70 per cent voting 'Yes'.

There was also a successful referendum on the Maastricht Treaty in June 1992, despite the then leader of Democratic Left, Proinsias De Rossa, warning that the Treaty would take us "more than halfway" to a common defence policy.

The next Euro referendum was the Amsterdam Treaty in 1998, which was passed despite another poor turnout. Amsterdam was the first referendum in which groups from opposite ends of the political spectrum, ranging from wealthy businessmen to rabid republicans, joined forces on the 'No' side.

The 'No' campaign eventually claimed a scalp when the Nice Treaty was voted down in 2001. The turnout was under 35 per cent -- the lowest ever for a Europe referendum. The Government restaged it in 2002 and it was passed.

The 'Yes' vote establishment political parties may be far from inspiring, but the forces on the 'No' side have cried, "Europe is Evil" too many times to be taken seriously again.

I've been around for the debates on the Single European Act in 1987, Maastricht in 1992, Amsterdam in 1998 and the two Nice ones in 2001 and 2002 -- and it's anything but nice. The 'No' people have been scaring the shite out of me for years about conscription and being forced to join a European army. I've never believed a European army would be effective because it sounds like it would be a cross between the Swiss Guards and the FCA. The only efficient aspects to the EU are the way MEPs fill out their expenses forms and an ability to come up with dodgy directives, so an army would really be beyond them.

For more than 30 years, the 'No' side has been the Chicken Licken of Irish defence policy -- and, fortunately, we're still waiting for the sky to fall in.

Back in 1972, here's what a leaflet from the Common Market Defence Campaign said: "We would have to surrender our traditional neutrality and might well face conscription and nuclear bases in Ireland if the EEC forms a defence alliance, which is very probable."

In 1992, veteran anti-Europe campaigner Anthony Coughlan said voting for the Maastricht Treaty would "lead to the conscription of young Irishmen into a European army".

Former Green TD, Roger Garland, came out with this classic during the Maastricht debate in 1992: "The issues in this debate are crucial to the whole future of this country, as significant as the Act of Union in 1800 which, as we know, was followed by a famine."

Perhaps the biggest flip-flopper on Europe is current Environment Minister, John Gormley. Speaking on the Amsterdam Treaty in 1998, he said Ireland was "gradually being sucked into a military alliance". Sounds painful. In 1998, Gormley said the reason the Greens were voting against Amsterdam was because it included provisions that "endanger democracy, human rights and international peace and security". In 2001, he said the Nice Treaty was "a further attack on democracy, which moves decision-making further away from the Irish people".

How times change. John Gormley is now in Government with Fianna Fail, he's in favour of Lisbon and his testosterone levels have also risen. He may have spent years going on about neutrality and peace and harmony, but he's the only government minister in living memory to have managed to really upset a superpower.

The Chinese ambassador, Liu Biwei, stormed out of the Green Party conference last month when Gormley classed Tibet as a country in his leader's address.

At least he has changed his mind on things, which is more than can be said for his colleague Patricia McKenna, who is canvassing for a 'No' vote with a group called the People's Movement. The ex-Green MEP has had such a busy year opposing things like Lisbon, her own party, and the new Government, that even choosing a breakfast cereal in her house must be difficult.

"We can't have Shreddies in this house! Did you see on their ads the way they exploit those grannies who have to knit them!"

Even though it's 2008, Patricia is still using the same old Green predictions -- the ones that have never come true -- that a 'Yes' vote will lead to the militarisation of Europe.

"The EU is clearly preparing for the possibility of future military action to protect its own vested interests. The Lisbon Treaty will give the EU all the powers it needs to use military might to protect its interests. This is the new colonialism of the 21st century and it's being supported by our own government," she said recently.

Oddly, the only battle that has taken place so far because of the Lisbon Treaty was started by 'No' campaigners when Labour MEP Proinsias de Rossa was roughed up outside Liberty Hall last month.

And being a 'No' campaigner brings its own stresses. For a start, it's kind of like having a racehorse -- you have to pick a name for your group that hasn't been used before. That's not so easy when most of the names involve "no" or "anti war" or "people".

Among the creative solutions the 'No' campaigners have come up with are Patricia McKenna's People's Movement, Anthony Coughlan's National Platform, the People Before Profit Alliance, the Irish Anti-War Movement, the Peace and Neutrality Alliance and the Vote No Campaign.

The new 'No' kids on the block are Libertas, a group that's headed by pinstripe-clad multimillionaire Declan Ganley.

The main concern of Libertas is that taxation policy will be interfered with and costs for businesses will go up if we vote for Lisbon.

Libertas obviously hopes that by using a Latin name they'll acquire some gravitas and be distinguished from the scruffy Eighties rejects that make up the ranks of the anti-Treaty side. But, if his recent comments are anything to go by, beneath Declan's pinstripe exterior lurks a woolly-jumper-clad crusty who's dying for a pint of Beamish.

He claimed recently that if we vote 'Yes', a dreadful creature would be unleashed on Europe, because the Lisbon Treaty "creates a Frankenstein's monster from the successful body of European treaties that we already have -- it guts them and replaces them with other languages."

So the monster is gutting the treaties, Declan! Of course it is, pet! Now have a nice cup of tea and a sit-down and you'll feel better!

European treaty debates are the political equivalent of rows over rocky outcrops in Dalkey -- the select few get het up about it, but it's not relevant to the rest of us.

Unfortunately, we're saddled with having referendums because of the Crotty Supreme Court judgement, while our European neighbours are happy enough for their parliaments to ratify the treaty, or not.

Even Poland, the EU's awkward-squad member, has now ratified the Treaty in parliament after a protracted political row. The Polish Prime Minister didn't have the two-thirds parliamentary majority required to ratify the Treaty so he had to negotiate with Poland's Kaczynski twins, one of whom is president and the other the leader of the main opposition party. And thus, despite fears among conservatives that gay marriages would be forced on Catholic Poland and that properties lost to Poland by Germany after the Polish-German border was redrawn in 1945 would have to be returned, the Poles managed to ratify the Lisbon Treaty in parliament.

We voted in a new government last year, and surely the purpose of our elected representatives is to legislate for us and stand or fall on that. Instead, every few years, the politicians pass the buck and we get stuck in the middle of a glorified students-union election, all thanks to our 70-year-old Constitution with its mix of clerical, nationalist and isolationist ideals from the Thirties.

If anyone wants to deceive themselves that there's widespread public interest in the Lisbon Treaty, they obviously would have chosen not to attend a Lisbon meeting in DCU last month -- much like the rest of the nation.

It was the first time the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs has held public sessions outside Leinster House, and the first meeting was held on a miserable Thursday night in Dublin City University.

Before the event, committee chairman Bernard Durkan TD said: "We want to give as many people as possible an opportunity to debate the issues."

I was there and it was the saddest public event I've ever seen. It made a night out at Menopause, the Musical look positively enticing. There couldn't have been more than 40 people in a lecture theatre in the student centre. The star attractions were the 12 Oireachtas Committee members onstage, seated at a long table draped with white tablecloths, flanked by giant Irish and EU flags.

Optimistically, there were "No Applause" signs placed at the front of the stage. "No Sleeping" signs would have been handier as the audience looked like they'd been rejected for the Questions & Answers audience because they were too boring.

The most entertaining event of the night was the fact that the Oireachtas ushers, in their black uniforms with gold harps, changed the guard every 10 minutes at the side of the stage. With their flamboyant costume, those guys could become a surefire tourist attraction in Leinster House.

First, we had to listen to the politicians giving their opinion on the Lisbon Treaty. The top prize for jargon went to the Green senator, Deirdre De Burca, who dazzled everyone with talk about "sunset clauses" and "soft power" -- which, apparently, is not something you buy in shops with blacked-out windows.

Then, there were submissions from the audience in the style of the McCarthy hearings, with a bloke sitting at a little table with a microphone facing the Committee members.

Unfortunately, it wasn't remotely like the McCarthyite "have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" grillings.

The Oireachtas Committee could be better described as a "have you ever had anything better to do?" hearing.

Some guy who said he represented residents' associations launched into some diatribe about the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. I thought residents' associations made sure the grass was cut and hanging baskets were watered, and didn't worry too much about ethnic conflict as long as the marigolds survived.

Another middle-aged guy in an ill-fitting windcheater took the stand to ask the committee why we weren't debating the theological and spiritual aspects of the Lisbon Treaty. He also said he'd worked out that two thirds of our laws came from Brussels.

If these meetings are attracting the kind of people that would make you gnaw off your left arm rather than share a seat with them on the bus, then the Government could be in for a shock on June 12.

My favourite contributor was the angst-ridden computer student with a ponytail who told the Committee that his problem was that he "couldn't interact with Europe".

They couldn't really help him and just politely turned off his mic, but I think I can solve his problem and tidy him up at the same time. I'd say the best way to interact with Europe these days is to get a haircut in Cork, because there are loads of copies of the Lisbon Treaty lying around the hairdressers there.