How do we mean ‘democratic’ and ‘dialogic’ when referring to something supposedly universal such as science? This chapter will look at nanotechnology in an Irish context drawing from current thinking in science communication and science studies, particularly ideas concerning public engagement and public participation in science governance. The specific approach used here extends the concept of engagement to include how publics might interact and potentially shape the discourses, and indeed even the 'products', of emerging science. I will address two key areas: first, a separation between a strategic science and a constructed ‘public’ where public participation might happen, on the one hand operating as a one-way communication process but now increasingly dialogic, yet on the other hand also increasingly the context for strategic vision for Ireland in a global economy. We are in the era of technoscience, application-driven science with extraordinary epistemological position of legitimacy and public resonance (Nowotny et al, 2001). ‘The public’ here is often constructed as ‘disadvantaged’ in the sense of having a knowledge deficit, requiring education and more scientific literacy. Second, I ask why and where public participation should occur for something as abstract and technical as the nanosciences among communities that are truly disadvantaged in a social and economical sense, removed as they are from hi-tech policy discourses. However, there has, in recent decades, been greater emphasises in science communication theory and practice on public engagement (Wynne, 2005; Dalgado, 2010). I will focus on the citizen jury as one potentially strong, public -oriented model, drawing from an Environmental Protection Agency project on which I worked (Murphy, 2010). The chapter concludes with a description of how a sub-political dialogue, contributing to social action beneath mainstream politics, can best be achieved in an Irish context and how policy could realistically change in response to public response to nanotechnology.