EU/Voting on treaty:When asked in the early hours of yesterday morning if she was trying to sneak through an EU treaty without holding pesky referendums, German chancellor Angela Merkel, invoked Ireland and Bertie Ahern as a way to sidestep a tricky question.
"The Irish Taoiseach has said he would have a referendum and go to the people. It is the responsibility of each member state to decide," answered Dr Merkel, who is anxious to avoid claims that EU leaders are bulldozing their way past public opinion.
Earlier Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern had all but confirmed his position on a treaty, saying it was "highly likely" that the Republic would hold a referendum. Behind the scenes, however, all efforts are being made to persuade EU leaders not to hold referendums that, if rejected, could plummet the EU back into an institutional crisis.
Indeed, it now looks like the Republic could end up being the only European state to hold a referendum on any new "reform treaty" cobbled together at the EU summit.
Denmark, the other habitual host of European referendums, is making every effort behind the scenes to hold a referendum on a new treaty to reform how the EU works.
At the summit, Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen refused to be drawn.
"We will decide if we will stage a referendum in Denmark when we have concluded the negotiations on the new treaty and we know what we have agreed on," he said.
Behind the scenes though the Danish constitutional "sherpas" have been busy in recent weeks getting a series of modifications to the draft treaty prepared by the presidency.
The Danish justice ministry had highlighted nine points in the EU constitution that represented a change in sovereignty that would mandate a referendum. They include space policy, intellectual property and diplomatic and consular protection and have all been adjusted in the new draft treaty. Some think it will enable Denmark to avoid holding a referendum fraught with the danger of rejection.
The Netherlands is also likely to avoid holding a second referendum. Bruised by the rejection of the EU constitution in June 2005, the Dutch are negotiating hard to achieve concessions in a new treaty that would enable it to be ratified in parliament.
Fear of holding a referendum is also the motivation behind the British strategy of marking out clear "red lines" around issues that impact on national sovereignty.
So if the Danes, British and Dutch can avoid referendums, why can't the Irish? Most politicians cite the Crotty judgment in 1987 when the Supreme Court ruled that significant changes to the EU treaties requiring an amendment to the Constitution required a referendum. However, the legal case for holding a referendum on the new reform treaty is far from clear cut, according to legal experts on Irish and European law.
"I think this treaty is a tidying-up treaty," says Eugene Regan, chairman of the lawyers group in the Institute of European Affairs. "I don't see anything particularly fundamental that requires a referendum in Ireland."
The Crotty judgment recognised that the European project is an evolving construct and, for example, found that introducing qualified majority voting did not invoke the need for a referendum. Foreign policy was the only aspect that invoked the need for a referendum and there is no big change in that area in a new treaty, he says.
If Attorney General Paul Gallagher agrees, it could pose a tricky question for Mr Ahern, who will have to decide whether to break with an evolving political tradition and ratify the new "reform treaty" in the Dáil.