European justice ministers have moved a step closer to agreeing a European arrest warrant that would make it easier to extradite criminal suspects from one EU member state to another.
The Belgian EU presidency is to prepare revised proposals on the issue after the justice ministers narrowed differences between them at a meeting in Brussels yesterday.
The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, said last night that while a number of aspects remained to be finalised, many of the Irish concerns about the original proposal had now been met.
The EU ministers were now "a lot closer than we were before" to doing a deal in advance of the EU summit in Laeken, Belgium, on December 7th.
The idea of a common arrest warrant emerged in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks on the US.
The idea was to end the sometimes lengthy extradition procedures between member states.
However, differences quickly emerged between EU states with differing legal systems. Ireland was among several states with reservations, seeing the initial proposal as too broad and possibly conflicting with national judicial and legal procedures and the Constitution.
While the initial proposal was to apply to all crimes involving a sentence of 12 months or more, Mr O'Donoghue yesterday supported a proposal from Luxembourg that it apply to crimes incurring a sentence of four years or more.
The original proposal that the "dual criminality" rule - that the crime in relation to which extradition is sought be an offence in the requested and requesting countries be dropped - has been abandoned.
Instead, yesterday's proposals included one where crimes covered by the warrant would be listed.
Ireland was among five member states seeking this change.
The list of crimes to be covered proposed yesterday includes terrorism, participation in a criminal organisation, corruption, trafficking in human beings and in weapons and explosives.
Mr O'Donoghue said last night that while this was progress, he wanted to see specific crimes listed rather than just categories of offence. He said he hoped this could be done before December 7th.
Under the current proposals it is thought that EU states would be expected to hand over a detained suspect within 60 days of receiving an arrest warrant from another member state.
However, at Ireland's request, the clause covering this is expected to say that suspects "should" be handed over within this time, rather than "shall" be handed over.
This, Mr O'Donoghue said last night, is because a mandatory deadline could be seen by the courts as an unwarranted interference in their independence.
Attempts are also being made to ensure that certain categories of people would not be come under the auspices of the arrest warrant - that included anti-globalisation and other political protesters.
The Minister said he was also happy that a number of other Irish concerns would be addressed in the final draft.
These include assurances that someone extradited for one offence could not then be tried for another; that a person extradited could not be held in "investigative detention" for a period before a decision is made to charge them; and a provision that Ireland would only extradite people to states that extradited to Ireland.
He said there would be meetings between EU ambassadors and other officials over the next three weeks to try to finalise a proposal to be put to the Laeken EU summit. "We can only reach agreement when we are satisfied that our Constitutional requirements are met," he said.