What do the Irish have to be offered to vote “yes”? A lot more than they’ve been offered so far, clearly — and even then it might not do the trick. As the European Union summit wraps up today, the gift bag that other countries were irritably putting together looked skimpy.

The EU’s first solution to the “Irish problem” is clear: time. The only solid decision to emerge from the summit is that there will be another three months before formally broaching the question of what to do with the EU’s new unifying treaty now that the Irish have voted “no”.

In that time, on the surface, everything will be deliberate pleasantness. There will be no suggestion (as there was in the hours after the Irish vote) that the Irish Republic might be squeezed out of the union if it didn’t manage to reverse the verdict. There will be no suggestion that the Irish people are to be bribed to come up with the opposite answer as soon as possible. But underneath the surface, that is exactly what will be happening. Brian Cowen, the Irish Prime Minister, said yesterday that it would be premature to offer remedies for Ireland’s “no” vote, but all that means is that it would be premature for Ireland to accept them. The offers of remedies have started right away.

The incentives will probably not take the form of cash, neither necessary nor, in the end, likely to be enough to change voters’ minds about the treaty, the EU’s attempt to set out new rules for running the enlarged union of 27 members. The main reasons that the “no” campaign cited in voting against the treaty were a perceived threat to Irish neutrality, to its ban on abortion, to workers’ rights, to low taxes and to its right to have an Irish commissioner within the European Commission.

Could Ireland be offered exemptions on these points of anxiety? Up to a point, and that is the route of the fudge that will most likely be attempted. An official of Sinn Fein, the nationalist group that was at the heart of the “no” campaign, told Reuters yesterday that she could back a new treaty if Ireland won binding assurances on neutrality, workers’ rights and public services.

But to write in clauses saying that Ireland would never have to do anything it didn’t want to do would mean a whole new treaty from the one that most EU members have already ratified. It would set a precedent for other countries to demand the same. It is inconceivable that they could begin the whole process of devising a treaty again.

In any case — the fear that hovers behind all these calculations, for supporters of the treaty — there is no guarantee that the Irish would vote “yes” even after being offered all kinds of special favours. It may be that they reckon that they have a good deal from Europe at the moment, and that any treaty represents a loss. In some sense they are right — as a small country they will have less clout under the new rules, which would remove the power of veto over new laws on some issues.

The Irish may find some pressure diverted by the Czech Republic and Poland, both now contemplating delays in ratifying the treaty. There is also going to be a gushing campaign issuing from Brussels of “listening to the people”, particularly on food and fuel prices, although this two-day summit has shown a rift within Europe about what it means to listen. The summit backed away yesterday from a French-led suggestion of more subsidies to cushion these blows.

All the same, the question of whether a “yes” can be extracted from Ireland is likely to come to the crunch in the next year. And if it won’t? The EU would have to decide whether it was more destructive to shove Ireland out, to work out what a “two-speed Europe” really meant in practice or to keep on working with the existing rules. The last option still looks the best, and the first the worst.

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