SKIBBEREEN, Ireland -- The Irish gave the Maastricht Treaty on European union a kiss of life yesterday, with nearly 70 percent approving the same document narrowly rejected less than a month ago by the Danes.
"It is a day of national celebration," said Prime Minister Albert Reynolds. "Euro-skeptics do not have much of a following here in Ireland."
The response elsewhere in Europe was equally exultant. Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany said he "emphatically welcomed the decision of the Irish people. It was important they didn't allow themselves to be influenced by the tiny majority in the Danish referendum."
Jacques Delors, the president of the European Council, the godfather of the Maastricht Treaty, said in Paris that the vote was important for Ireland and Europe.
"Europe is a long-term project," he said. "The choice is simple. It is a choice between survival, prosperity or decline."
The British government, more subdued, said that it was pleased with the vote and that "the treaty reflects the British agenda."
If the Danish veto can somehow be overcome and the treaty eventually ratified by all 12 member states of the European Community, it will take these states to monetary union under a single currency.
The Maastricht Treaty, named after the Dutch town where it was signed in December, would also move the 12 toward common foreign and domestic policies.
Through the creation of a new cohesion fund, it would elevate the living standards and strengthen the economies of the EC's four poorest nations: Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.
Ireland, one of the largest recipients of EC funds since it entered in 1973 ($30 billion), is believed to have voted for its pocketbook.
With a turnout of 55 per cent, the majority turned back an intense campaign against ratification by anti-abortion forces fearful that permissive European law on abortion might be introduced into the island.
The Roman Catholic Church abstained from overt campaigning, but some priests in rural parishes such as are found here in County Cork urged a "no" vote from their pulpits.
In the abortion referendum of 1983 and the divorce referendum of 1986, conservative rural voters defeated both initiatives, many of them influenced by their priests.
But this time the vote in the countryside was stronger for Europe than the city vote, probably because of the lavish EC agricultural funds.
