Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern has said he is hopeful a deal on a new treaty can be agreed at the European Union summit that begins in Brussels tomorrow.
Leaders of the 27 EU states meet in Brussels tomorrow and Friday to try to broker an agreement on reform of EU institutions needed to replace the failed constitutional treaty, which was agreed during Ireland's EU presidency.
Backers say the reform is needed to allow further enlargement of the bloc but member states have clashed over Britain's efforts to limit EU foreign policy powers and Poland's objections to a proposed new voting system.
The German government last night published a draft outline for a new treaty to replace the failed constitution, which was rejected by French and Dutch voters in referendums in 2005.
The text is a mandate to allow drafting of the treaty to begin later this year. However, Polish threats to veto the new treaty unless negotiations on the EU voting system are reopened threaten to scupper the chances of reaching an agreement between member states.
Speaking this morning, Mr Ahern said the EU had to "go back to the drawing board" following the failure of efforts to ratify the original constitution.
He conceded the EU has all but abandoned hope of drafting a full constitution, opting instead for amending existing treaties to meet the needs of the expanded bloc. However, he was confident agreement could be met.
"From what we have seen so far, what is being proposed does maintain the essential balance and substance of the previous draft constitution and that was our priority going into these [talks]," Mr Ahern told RTE's Morning Ireland.
The core values of the constitution must remain, he insisted. Ireland is strongly opposed to Poland's demands on voting rights.
"We also we absolutely adamant that, given the constitution was put together after years of hard haggling, if you start to pick away at some of the major issues in what was agreed ... the whole thing begins to unravel."
"What we have seen so far we are pleased with and we would hope that an agreement would come out," the Minister added, but accepted that the most
likely outcome at the end of the summit would be that the draft treaty would remain a work-in-progress rather than a completed document.
If agreement is reached, the German government, which currently holds the six-month rotating EU presidency, would call an Intergovernmental Conference, to be held during Portugal's tenure in the second half of this year.