MARTINA Devlin says her heart tells her to vote No but her head tells her to vote Yes. Colm McCarthy advises us to swallow hard and vote Yes. Another economist, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, describes the struggle between his instincts and his intellect and comes to the same conclusion.
One of my friends, himself a man of sceptical disposition, knows me for an out-and-out federalist. He was astonished that a lifelong Europhile could even contemplate voting against the fiscal pact.
Nobody loves this baby, and those of us who have taken it to our bosoms have done so only because we know that rejection would mean catastrophe.
But the baby changed this week: changed, it would seem, not just in appearance but in nature.
There has always been something starkly missing in this treaty. It is not "Thatcherite and Reaganite" as Gerry Adams glibly claims. It is not prompted by ideology.
Of course we must have fiscal discipline. But austerity programmes alone will not suffice to cure, or even alleviate, Europe's economic ills. We must also have measures to promote growth and employment.
And this week, Europe's elite joined in the cries of their populations for such measures.
In all probability, Francois Hollande is about to become president of France. On Wednesday he elaborated on his previous demands for stimulating the European economy. He says he will bring his proposals to Chancellor Angela Merkel as soon as he is elected. Unless he succeeds, he will refuse to ratify the treaty.
Hardly were the words out of his mouth than his rival, President Nicolas Sarkozy, jumped on the bandwagon. Never mind Mr Sarkozy's motives: this means that whoever rules France after the election is committed to a spectacular change of course.
Also on board are the International Monetary Fund under Christine Lagarde and the two "super-Marios": Mr Monti, the Italian prime minister, and Mr Draghi, chief of the European Central Bank. Mind you, we might wonder about the ECB after its latest "drop dead" message to Ireland, but infinitely bigger issues come into play here than the saga of the Anglo promissory notes. Bigger, in fact, than the bank's own role, although this has to be crucial to reform.
Experts say that Europe must have "a real central bank" with an expanded mandate and enhanced powers. That implies debt-sharing and, quite likely, debt forgiveness.
And as if this were not sufficiently dramatic, it implies a giant step towards federalism.
At the time of the Lisbon Treaty debate -- and before that, during the debate on the aborted European constitution -- I saw Lisbon as a compromise, the maximum degree of federation the peoples of the European Union would accept. Since then the arrangement, to put it mildly, has not worked well. We have to come closer together or risk dissolution.
For the moment, however, the central question remains the renegotiation (Mr Hollande's word) of the fiscal treaty or the addition to it of a protocol on growth. Our own Government, stuck in its usual rabbit-in-headlamps posture, evidently has not come to terms with these issues.
It says it will go ahead with the referendum on May 31; in other words, in just over one month's time. It's hardly conceivable that an amended treaty could be produced in such a short period. Will we have to vote on what amounts to no more than a draft? Will we then have to vote again on the revised version?
I wonder whether these questions crossed the minds of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions delegates this week when they decided to make no recommendation to their members on how to vote. That was a deeply ironic event. It happened at almost exactly the same time that Francois Hollande was detailing his proposals for economic stimulus. And the unions want, in effect, the same thing that Mr Hollande wants. SIPTU, the biggest union, has called for a ¿15bn "stimulus package".
Earlier, three unions had come out in favour of a No vote in the referendum. What can they possibly hope to achieve by that? They have abdicated their leadership role and aligned themselves with Gerry Adams, Joe Higgins, Richard Boyd Barrett and all the thoughtless people who object to everything from property taxes to restrictions on cutting turf.
In easier times it might be possible to ignore the daft arguments and the noisy campaigns. Not now. We live in dangerous times. Sinn Fein poses the biggest danger, and we did not need the opinion polls to tell us that. The danger is all the greater because the party is getting smarter. Some thought they saw a straw in the wind this week when it gave prominence in the Dail to its former parliamentary leader, Caoimhghin O Caolain.
You will recall that after the general election Mr Adams took over this job from Mr O Caolain. Mr Adams has not been a success. He obviously knows nothing about economics -- not that that makes him any different from most Irish politicians, including cabinet members.
More to the point, he seems to know very little about society in this part of the world. His onslaughts against the Irish language would be amusing if they were not so hard on the ear.
Mr O Caolain's delivery is pompous and off-putting, but his speeches read well; read like the words of someone who knows what he is talking about. So do those of Mary Lou McDonald.
The time cannot be far off when Sinn Fein changes its leader. Will that help it to establish itself as the second party in the State, in electoral terms, not just in opinion polls? A scary thought.
In the meantime, it will exploit every discontent and seize every opportunity that presents itself. The referendum campaign is tailor-made for Sinn Fein. It beats turf-cutting.
Even so, the centre will hold in Ireland as it has held so far in most of Europe, the Greek meltdown and the Dutch shock notwithstanding. But it needs to be fortified, and Angela Merkel needs to be persuaded.
Francois Hollande says that, if elected, he will bring to her "the French people's vote for another Europe".
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