The appearance of controversial posters on lampposts injected some edge to an otherwise dull Lisbon referendum campaign last week.

Anti-Lisbon group Cóir's posters sparked a wave of criticism from government ministers, farmers' groups and even a former taoiseach as the posters were labelled as "distortions, mistruths and downright lies".

One of the strongest attacks on Cóir, which describes itself as a voluntary, non-profit campaign group, came from the Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin when he claimed they were running a campaign based on lies and untruths.

But the organisation has stood over its poster campaign and one comment on the Cóir website provides a sharp reminder for the pro-Lisbon side that Cóir's tactics were successful during the first referendum campaign.

Last time around, Cóir's election posters depicted three monkeys with the slogan, "The New EU, won't see you, won't hear you, won't speak for you."

The organisation's website has recorded that after the defeat of the first referendum, Green Party TD Ciaran Cuffe remarked: "Cóir hit the ground running. The monkeys worked."

Second time around, it looks like Cóir has hit the ground running again ahead of the 2 October referendum. Cóir is not employing monkeys on its posters this time but are its latest posters telling the truth with legitimate arguments or is it just scaremongering?

The Poster: Milked Dry! €200 billion lost in fisheries. Farming is next. Vote No

* The Cóir Argument

Speaking to the Sunday Tribune, Brian T Hickey, Cóir spokesman, said: "Our fisheries have been destroyed. About 40% of the fish going into the EU comes from Irish waters yet Irish fishermen are forced to work long hours because our waters have been opened up.

"Under the Lisbon treaty we lose voting weight in the Council of Ministers. CAP is weighted in favour of French farmers and 35% of its budget goes to French farmers. So after the Lisbon treaty even more of the CAP funding will go to the French and the Irish farmers will lose out."

While the IFA has backed the treaty, Hickey argued: "A lot of farmers are privately against the treaty. When the IFA came out in favour of the treaty a few weeks ago, IFA president Padraig Walshe gave three reasons to vote yes. I don't think any of them have anything to do with the text of the treaty. My impression is that most of the small farmers on the ground would be sceptical of the treaty."

* The Counter Argument

The Irish Farmers' Association (IFA), the largest farmers' group in the country is campaigning for aYes vote on 2 October.

IFA president Padraig Walshe outlined that European membership has given Ireland access to an unrestricted market of over 500 million consumers which is "crucial for us" and membership of the euro has kept Irish interest rates low.

Walshe said it was in farmers' best interests to support Lisbon and added: "The future of the Common Agricultural Policy is up for renegotiation in the next couple of years, and we feel it is much more important for us to be involved in the heart of those negotiations."

The Poster: They won your freedom. don't throw it away. vote no

* The Cóir argument

Hickey claimed: "We owe our independence to the 1916 rising. Those men and women fought to free us from the colonial domination of a foreign power. They felt that Ireland was best left to be run by the Irish themselves.

"We also believe that Ireland is best run by the Irish themselves and not by a foreign bureaucracy."

* The Counter Argument

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin, labelled this poster as "both a disgrace and an insult to the heroes of 1916".

Former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald said: "Ninety-three years ago, my parents were both in the GPO with Pearse, Connolly, and Clarke. In 1919 just before his appointment as head of the Dáil government's propaganda office, my father spoke of our need to go beyond securing just political independence from Britain by getting out from under other forms of dependence on that country through closer links with the rest of Europe.

"We achieved that in 1973 when, in the spirit of 1916, we at last secured our economic independence from our near neighbour, within the framework of what is now the European Union.

"That economic break with Britain is what enabled us virtually to treble our living standards within a generation, raising our national output per head from barely half that of Britain to a higher level than in that country."

"Let us ignore those who want us to put all that at risk by joining with Britain's Euro-phobes to oppose Lisbon – which would threaten to draw us back again into debilitating economic independence upon that country."

The Poster: New voting rights. Germany 17% ireland 0.8%. We lose under Lisbon. Vote no

* The Cóir Argument

According to Cóir, the Irish government has negotiated away whatever power we had in Europe. Hickey said: "Under Lisbon, the voting arrangements for each country are going to be rearranged according to population size.

"At present, Germany has four times as many votes as us on the Council of Europe. Because countries like Germany have greater populations, our voting weights will be slashed and Lisbon will bring in the qualified majority voting whereby 55% of member states could push through measures in the council provided that they comprised 65% of the EU population."

* The Counter Argument

A European Commission spokesman told the Sunday Tribune: "Most agreements are made on the Council of Europe as that is where governments meet in the EU.

"Under Lisbon we have a double majority system on the Council of Europe. In theory some agreements are made on the basis of qualified majority voting where you need a certain majority of over 65%. That system is being changed to a double majority system. First of all you need a majority of say over 55% or 15 of the 27 member states. Then you need over 65% or 321 million of the population of the union. This stops the large countries like France, Germany and Italy ganging up and saying they will do what they want in Europe. The system has effectively been changed to give smaller and medium sized countries more say in a larger EU that has 27 member states."

Pro-Lisbon group Generation Yes has also refuted Coir's claim as a "blatant misrepresentation".

The Poster: €1.84 Minimum wage after Lisbon? Vote No

* The Cóir Argument

Hickey claimed: "With that poster we are just trying to highlight the worrying trend in the EU over last few years where wages are being undercut by cheap labour. That has been shown in the Laval, Viking, Ruffert cases. In each of those cases the European Court of Justice has found in favour of the employers who are paying their workers lower wages than the locally accepted rates.

"We got the €1.84 figure by working out the average minimum wage of the 11 accession states. We are trying to highlight the move in this direction as shown by those judgements and the Lisbon treaty does nothing to reverse that."

* The Counter Argument

Timmy Dooley, Fianna Fáil TD and vice chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs, said: "The fact is that the EU has and will have no role whatsoever in the level of the national minimum wage – in this or in any other country. The national minimum wage in Ireland is set down in Irish Law, cannot be changed by the EU and nothing in the Lisbon treaty will alter this situation in the slightest. There are no ifs, buts or maybes."

Dooley's party colleague Dara Calleary, Minister for Labour Affairs, said: "This is yet another smoke screen to deliberately confuse people. The Lisbon treaty, through the guarantee on workers' rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights, will not affect the minimum wage and in fact strengthens the rights and entitlements of workers in these turbulent economic times." Elsewhere, the Charter Group, a group of trade union leaders, have claimed that a vote on 2 October will improve workers' rights.

The Poster: 95% of europeans would vote no – charlie mccreevy, 2009. stand up for europe. vote no

* The Cóir Argument

Hickey told the Sunday Tribune: "That figure was quoted online in the EU Observer earlier this year.

"What McCreevy was referring to was that 95% of European countries would vote No to the treaty. The poster is just acknowledging that most people would not vote for the treaty if they had the chance.

"The French and Dutch rejected the EU constitution and after the French rejected it, Nicolas Sarkozy said that the same would happen in every other country if they had a referendum so that is why they have not been allowed referendums in other EU states."

* The Counter Argument

A European Commission spokesman said: "Lisbon is a very technical treaty that needs a lot of explaining.

"It is very complex to get 27 different countries to agree on something and this is the context [in which] Commissioner McCreevy made his comment.

"We live in representative democracies and each European democracy has a different tradition with regard to how international and European treaties are ratified or not. Most countries have a tradition where the elected appointed members of a parliament or senate are the ones who ratify international and European treaties for the people they represent.

"He argued that in the Irish case you have referendums to decide and as other Euro states have different ways of deciding, the rights of each member state to have their own way of making their own decisions should be respected."