By Tuesday, it appeared taoiseach Brian Cowen had managed to find the tone that was missing for much of the Lisbon campaign. His comments on RTE's Morning Ireland programme were more measured and convincing than much of what had been heard from the Yes side in the previous few weeks, but it was too little too late. The Yes side was almost always defensive and playing catch-up during this campaign and there was much complaining from them that their task was unusually difficult because there was no "one big idea" they could sell the electorate. In truth, what they needed to do was what Cowen finally did at the very end – stop being dismissive, stop scaremongering, and emphasise how well Ireland has done out of the EU.

Overall, the campaigns of the main political parties began too late, were too distracted and at times woefully incoherent. There seemed to be little willingness to learn from the lessons of the first Nice campaign in 2001. While the Yes side struggled, the broad coalition advocating a no vote appeared better prepared and focused and had the added advantage of being able to make very effective use of the words of one of the architects of the rejected EU constitution, Giscard D'Estaing, who admitted that "public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly… all the earlier proposals will be in a new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way".

Those looking for a single reason for the decisive no vote will look in vain. Complaints about lack of knowledge abounded; there was a lot of fear and almost paranoia, as well as a distrust of politicians. What has changed significantly in the last decade is the extent to which the euro scepticism, apparent for so long in countries such as Britain, has resonated with many in Ireland. In the first 20 years of membership, this was not a significant factor. The early Eurobarometers, taken twice a year to monitor feelings about the community in the member states, suggested that economics rather than politics was foremost in the minds of the Irish. The second Eurobarometer in autumn 1974, for example, found that 82% of Irish people polled considered the most important aspect of the community was economic.

There was rarely any evidence in those days that Irish enthusiasm for European integration could be taken at face value as an expression of a European identity, but rather that it was essentially pragmatic and related to how much money Ireland could get out of membership. This is hardly surprising; largely as a result of membership, by 1978 real per capita farming incomes were more than double their level in 1970.

In addition, between its initial payout from the regional fund in 1975 and 1981, Ireland received £159m from the fund to aid the growth of infrastructure, and Irish receipts from the European social fund rose from £4.1m in 1973 to £53.5m in 1980.

Who can forget Albert Reynolds' glee at how much he'd bagged in structural funds in the early 1990s? With that kind of payout being loudly trumpeted, it is not surprising that a Eurobarometer in 1994 showed that 79% of the Irish surveyed responded positively to the question as to whether they viewed membership as a good thing, compared to 58% in the community as a whole.

But when it came to any sense of attachment to a "European ideal", however vaguely defined, we seemed immune and uninformed. When he was minister for European affairs in 1995, Fine Gael's Gay Mitchell expressed astonishment at the level of ignorance regarding basic knowledge of European community structures, quoting a survey that revealed 50% of Irish people were unaware the European Parliament was directly elected by the peoples of Europe.

In 1994, Dermot Scott, an official in the EU parliament, suggested that in Ireland, "for want of information, public opinion has not understood the EU and has therefore not genuinely taken the EU to its heart, having a somewhat semi-detached attitude, willing to go along, but having little knowledge or conviction about the goals of integration, little vision of what a European Union might become. The corollary is also true: that there seems to be little enough genuine opposition and that each dose of integration, however balefully received, is swallowed and ingested, though the patient may scowl at the next spoonful".

But that was to change. By 2001, turnout for the Nice referendum was only 35% which resulted in the rejection of that treaty and an instruction to vote again because the wrong answer had been given. The rerun of that referendum in October 2002 resulted in the passing of the treaty after many pro-Europe heavyweights were drafted in to hammer home the message that we were doomed if we rejected it again.

But there were certain trends and sentiments that were clear from the Nice campaigns. Phrases like "democratic deficit", "marginalisation of smaller states", "arrogant EU officials" and "the abandonment of neutrality" were frequently employed and became prominent again in the Lisbon campaign. The main political parties struggled to confront them, while the No campaigners, though they made wild, exaggerated and disingenuous claims, marketed their message much more effectively. But they have failed to formulate a realistic alternative, and, at the moment, their victory looks hollow and the Irish electorate will appear to many Europeans as petulant and ungrateful.

Diarmaid Ferriter is a historian

and broadcaster