The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, has strongly criticised Sinn Fein's opposition to the Nice Treaty.
"Sinn Fein would have the Irish people reject Nice on the basis of opposition to militarism and in defence of neutrality. Can this, we wonder, be the same Sinn Fein that also seems quite at ease with the idea that private armies should hold on to their lethal and illegal military arsenals until they themselves, in their own good time, decide otherwise?"
No one would seriously believe that Sinn Fein could make comfortable bedfellows with British Tory Euro-sceptics, the Minister said. "No one is that gullible," Mr O'Donoghue said in a statement issued after a meeting of Fianna Fail on Friday evening.
The Irish Green Party also came in for criticism on its opposition to the Treaty of Nice, with Mr O'Donoghue accusing it of being out of step with Green policy in the rest of Europe. "What can be said of this party whose policies and attitudes regularly make good theatre of the absurd?" he asked.
The Minister's criticism of Sinn Fein comes in the wake of recent controversy in Kerry in which he accused the party of vigilantism and of usurping the work of gardai because of its activities in fighting crime. Sinn Fein has denied the accusations and Mr Martin Ferris, the party's councillor and general election candidate in Kerry North, said the party had acted within the law and was simply responding to requests by members of the public for assistance in recovering stolen property. Mr O'Donoghue received a report from gardai on the matter.
In his defence of Nice, Mr O'Donoghue said the treaty did not affect Irish neutrality. In his own area of justice and equality, Europe after Nice would continue to be of "immediate and tangible benefit", he said. Enlargement of the EU would provide vast opportunities for a country such as Ireland so strongly dependent on export markets, Mr O'Donoghue said.