Third of Irish voters undecided on EU treaty: poll

(DUBLIN) - One third of Irish voters have yet to make up their minds about whether they will support ratification of the EU's fiscal pact in a May 31 referendum, according to an opinion poll published Thursday.

The Irish Independent-Millward Brown Lansdowne poll found that 37 percent would vote Yes and 24 percent plan to vote No, with 35 percent undecided and four percent who say they will not vote.

The newspaper said that when the "don't knows" are excluded, the Yes side leads by 60 percent to 40 percent for the No camp.

"The referendum is there for the taking by the Yes side, but the government will know there is no room for complacency," political editor Fionnan Sheahan wrote in the newspaper.

Ireland's referendum is expected to be the only plebiscite in the European Union on the pact, which is designed to strengthen the eurozone through tighter oversight of public finances.

With Greece in crisis after elections that have cast its future in the euro into doubt, the Irish vote will be watched closely in the EU.

The republic has previously sent shockwaves through Europe on treaty plans, having to vote twice before it passed two founding EU treaties, the Nice and Lisbon accords.

In November 2010, Ireland was forced to seek an 85-billion-euro ($108-billion) rescue package from the EU and International Monetary Fund when debt and deficit problems left its economy on the verge of collapse.

The new EU fiscal pact, drawn up in response to the eurozone crisis, forces countries to enshrine in national law a so-called "golden rule" to balance budgets or face automatic sanctions.

Any state which fails to ratify the new pact, which comes into effect once 12 states have ratified it, will lose the right to future EU bailouts.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny's Fine Gael party and coalition partner Labour are in favour of the treaty, as is the main Fianna Fail opposition party.

The republican Sinn Fein party, the Socialist Party and a number of independents are against it.

The poll was conducted nationwide among 1,016 adults on Monday and Tuesday.