There has been a systematic assault taking place on Irish democracy from a political establishment that seems to suffer from blind Europhilia for many years. Consider the following;
The 1937 Constitution sets out that sovereignty, law and governmental authority reside with, and are derived from, the people. Therefore, should there be any proposed change to that Constitution, the people have first to be consulted by referendum. The 1972 EEC Accession Treaty entailed that law emanting from the European Treaties would override any conflicting provisions in Irish law. Both the main parties, which carried an easy majority of the vote and which had dominated Irish politics for decades were pro-EEC, whilst Sinn Fein, the Labour Party and the Unions were against. As in the UK, there was little real appreciation of the real connotations of joining a supranationalist bloc, and proposal to join was agreed by the people in the May 1972 Accession Referendum. Similar referenda took place to permit the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, the Nice, Lisbon Treaties and the Eurozone Stability Treaties to be ratified. However, each of these later referenda were characterised by unconstitutional behaviour, deception and duplicity on the part of successive pro-EEC/EU governments.
In the case of the 1986 Single European Act, the government first attempted to railroad the treaty through the Oireachtas by majority vote, but the Supreme Court ruled (Crotty, 1987) that the SEA entailed a further surrender of sovereignty, and that it therefore had to obtain the consent of the people within whom that sovereignty resided. The Haughey government responded by spending public money only on the 'Yes' campaign, something that had never previously happened, and which was ruled 'undemocratic, unconstitutional and unfair' (McKenna 1995) by the Supreme Court in subsequent campaigns, and (in regard of one-sided allocation of free radio broadcasting time) 'illegal and unconstitutional' (Coughlan 2000). Although the Supreme Court found that these earlier campaigns had been carried by means that were variously unconstitutional, undemocratic, unfair and illegal, it did not invalidate the results of the referendums.
Following McKenna the government established the Referendum Commission, and charged it with ensuring that in future referendum campaigns the public were properly informed as to what effect the proposals would have on the Constitution, and of the arguments both for and against the proposals. A properly-informed public then rejected the Nice Treaty in 2001. When the EU Commission and the Irish government attempted a second stab at an unchanged Nice the following year, the Ahern government fast-tracked an amendment to the Referendum Act 1998 removing the Commission's role in informing the public of the Yes/No arguments on the last day of the Oireachtas sitting before the Christmas holiday, with just one day's prior notice to the opposition. There had also been an issue over the possibility of joining a future European Defence Pact, which would contravene Ireland's neutrality, and this was neutered by coupling the Nice Treaty to an undertaking to put any future engagement in a European Defence Pact to a referendum, the two put forward as a joint proposal to which the public could vote either Yes or No to the whole rather than either part, and meaning that anyone who voted No would also be voting to reject a referendum should there be a future proposal for Ireland to join a Euro Army. You could call this chicanery, or sleight of hand. I'll settle for either.
And so it goes on, through Lisbon, to Brexit. I've already mentioned the disaster that the 'honest, competent people who were serving the interests of the people who elected them' imposed upon Ireland when they frogmarched it into the Euro, or stripped it of its once vast fishing industry, or threw away its neutrality.
But this is utterly futile, and I'm becoming bored.