What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago I was broadcasting outside the Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters the day Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty, conveying the abject Brussels reaction back to Dublin.

The annoyance simmering inside the building could only be guessed (it would later be privately articulated to anyone interested), until along came Martin Schulz, the Socialists’ leader in the European Parliament. “Abortion? Neutrality? Taxation? None of these are in the treaty!” he fulminated.

Now – after a year of soul searching, three summits, an expensive government survey to ask the children of the Irish nation what they didn’t like about the big bad treaty and months spent by officials drafting “guarantees” – finally the EU-27, armed to the teeth with protocols and binding decisions, turns to the Irish electorate and declaims: “Abortion? Neutrality? Taxation? None of these are in the treaty!”

Something about the Irish just not getting it. Mind you, it’s not as if this were a first. In the darkest days of the Troubles, the British and Irish governments negotiated a power-sharing framework for the embittered tribes of Northern Ireland – the 1974 Sunningdale agreement – but it was brought down by hardline unionists. Cue 24 more years of bloodshed. Then the governments got together again (this time with the Americans) to produce the Good Friday agreement, a painstaking solution which, when you stood back from it, looked not unlike its predecessor.

“Sunningdale for Slow Learners”, was how one weary politician described it.

Already the June 2009 guarantees are being called “Lisbon for Slow Learners”. And it was a piquant irony that the drama was weaved around a showdown between Ireland’s Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown. With riot police outside it even felt like 1998 or, heaven forefend, 1974.

And suddenly, a letter! Written “in strictest confidence”, Cowen’s 11th hour appeal to his counterparts threw down the gauntlet and raised the stakes. Give me my protocols or I cannot “call, and win, a second referendum” he thundered. Braveheart stuff, and the fact that the leaked version had Brown’s name as recipient at the top, added to the plot.

But hang on a second. Who writes the words “in strictest confidence” on the eve of a summit and expects it not to be leaked? Could it be that this cliffhanger brinkmanship was all an elaborate hoax to elevate the danger, and sweeten the victory when Brian Cowen returned triumphant with his protocols and his binding European Council decisions?

Not my place to answer that one. But here we are again: Lisbon II and an October referendum. The Slow Learning by the Irish government on how to run a decent campaign will be interesting to see. Last time around they waited too long, got snagged in a party leadership battle, didn’t spend the money, and organised news conferences in the afternoon – after the No side’s dubi......