'Galway Man Wins Big Contract In America." As a story or a headline, it doesn't exactly set the world alight, does it? It might make the front page of the Connaught Tribune on a slow week, although mostly you'd expect to see it further down the paper, amongst the minor stories. Successful Irish business people haven't exactly been rare beasts in recent years and newspapers have plenty of other things to be writing about. Well done to the man who wins the contract in America, then, but there's no need to go overboard about it.

On Thursday, however, the Irish Examiner led with a story which amounted, give or take a few details, to an account of a Galway man who had secured €200m in contracts from the US military. All of the contracts were won legitimately. All were secured within the rules and regulations that exist in the US. Nevertheless, €200m is a not insignificant amount of money (although, in these days of permanent American aggression, it's not mindbogglingly enormous, either). The Examiner was perfectly entitled to draw attention to it.

The reaction to the story was swift, although it followed an entirely different narrative to the one we usually hear when Irish chaps do well abroad. Instead of praise, there was scorn. Instead of congratulation there was damnation. Here was one Irish businessman whose success was not to be tolerated.

The reason for this was because the businessman in question was Declan Ganley, one of the leaders of the No campaign which so spectacularly won the Lisbon referendum campaign in June. Since Ganley's victory, and the juvenile refusal by the political and media establishment to accept that the electorate preferred his arguments to theirs, Ganley has become an even greater nuisance than he had previously been. The very mention of him sets establishment teeth on edge.

Dick Roche, who seems to be embracing idiocy on an almost daily basis since 12 June, was the first to react to the story. Describing Ganley as a Grade A hypocrite, Roche suggested that there was an inconsistency between the Galwayman's calls for transparency in Europe and his winning of a contract in the US in 2004 which did not go out to public tender. As an argument, it was one of the weakest made by anybody in the Yes campaign, as though there was any reasonable connection to be made between a contract legitimately secured under American regulations and the way in which EU officials do their business. If anything, the only hypocrite on view was Roche: here was a member of a party that likes to portray itself as pragmatically pro-business thrashing a successful businessman because he holds opposing political views.

Until now, there has been one main argument as to why there should not be a second referendum on Lisbon: a sovereign and democratic decision was made on 12 June and there the story should end. Roche's reaction to the Examiner's story and the responses of others on the Yes side like Enda Kenny and Labour's Joe Costello suggest that there may be another reason for avoiding a new poll. A second referendum campaign would be as bitter as anything we have seen in recent Irish history. There is a sulking nastiness about the Yes side currently, a willingness to demonise and denigrate their opponents which (given that some on the No side are no angels either) would lead to the kind of vicious and underhand campaigning that would recall the days of the abortion and divorce referenda.

At last, however, some members of the European establishment are beginning to realise that there may be no point or need for another referendum. On Wednesday, Luxembourg's prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker, Europe's longest serving leader, warned the government not to proceed with a second referendum for the moment. "Governments are increasingly unpopular all over Europe," he said. "Organising a referendum on the European treaty is a dangerous path to take."

You can be sure that Brian Cowen, Micheál Martin and the rest realise this. Indeed, their slow progress in coming up with a coherent response to the June vote is partly rooted in this realisation. There will be no referendum until at least late 2009, then, by which point the British government may have changed.

And this may be the best outcome of all for Grianna Fáil. A Tory prime minister would hold a quick referendum, which would see the treaty being overwhelmingly rejected, and therefore consigned to history. (They accept democratic votes in Britain.) Even Dick Roche must appreciate the irony of Ireland being rescued from its post-Lisbon crisis by a referendum in the most Eurosceptic nation of all.

ddoyle@tribune.ie