The Seanad is tomorrow expected to pass the legislation banning opinion polls in the final week of election and referendum campaigns despite attempts to reverse the measure.
Government sources insisted last night that there would be no climbdown on the issue and said the Coalition would use its Seanad majority to have the Electoral Bill approved. It will then be up to the President either to sign the Bill into law or to refer it to the Supreme Court for a test of its constitutionality.
The leader of the Fine Gael group in the Seanad, Mr Maurice Manning, said the leader of the Fianna Fail group, Mr Donie Cassidy, had agreed last week that there would be a debate on the controversial restriction on opinion polls.
The Electoral Bill had been initiated in the Seanad and had passed through all stages there without any mention of the banning of opinion polls. It was then debated in the Dail at second and committee stages without any reference to banning polls. "If we do not debate it tomorrow, a major change in public policy which has not been debated in either House will become law," he said.
While Fine Gael initially supported - indeed proposed - the banning of opinion polls towards the end of campaigns, he said, his party would oppose the Electoral Bill in the Seanad as it had done in the Dail.
The leader of the Labour group in the Seanad, Mr Joe Costello, said he would be calling for a vote on the issue tomorrow. "This ill-thought-out and dangerous proposal is the work of a Government which is now as arrogant as it is out of touch with the electorate," he said.
"In the event that the Government is hell-bent on forcing the measure through the Seanad, I would very much hope that the President, Mrs McAleese, would call a meeting of the Council of State with a view to referring the Bill to the Supreme Court", he said.
Such a referral could ensure that the Electoral Bill, which controls corporate donations and imposes new election spending limits, is not in force in time for the next general election.
Mr Padraig Flynn, who was minister for the environment in 1991 when the idea of banning opinion polls was last mooted, confirmed yesterday that the attorney general of the day, Mr John Murray SC, had "sounded a note of caution" as to the constitutionality of the proposal.
Mr Murray had said that it could be vulnerable to challenge on the grounds that it might interfere with the rights of the public or the rights of opinion poll organisations, or indeed with the rights of candidates and political parties to impart and receive information.