The Government does not view the EU through rose-tinted spectacles and is extremely aware of the limits of European co-operation, according to the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell.
Following the verdict of the people on the Nice Treaty in June 2001 the Government had acknowledged that many people had real concerns about the treaty, or at least what they believed it contained.
They were not ideologically or politically hostile to the European Union or to enlargement, but had concerns, principally a conviction that the EU was not adequately accountable to the people. The Government had sought to address these concerns.
Speaking to EU ambassadors in Dublin yesterday, Mr McDowell said: "We do not accept change for change's sake, or because it corresponds to some bureaucrat's vision of what the political, economic, social or juridical shape of Europe should be.
"Our vision of Europe is not of a European superstate or federalist structure where the nation state surrenders systems of governnance or justice to a bureaucrat-inspired vision of harmonised law, for example.
"The mix of nation states will endure. It may not be tidy, the mix of national interests may not always fit readily together, but in this diversity lies the strength of the Union."
However, he stressed that these issues had little to do with Nice per se. "Nice is first and foremost about enlargement. It is not just about offering membership of some form of exclusive club to others. Nice is about making a European Union of 27 members as effective and as beneficial to all its members as is the Union of 15," Mr McDowell said.
The Government had been very anxious to ensure that enlargement would not place Ireland at any form of disadvantage and had ensured that all decisions on taxation would continue to be by unanimity.
While the larger states would have their voting weight increased by Nice, Ireland's would be only marginally affected, and would remain the same as Finland's and Denmark's. There was also a protection for smaller states in that decisions must have the support of a majority of member-states, he said.
In the European Parliament Ireland, with 12 seats, would have a better ratio of seats to population than any member-state except Luxembourg. The right of each member-state to nominate a judge to the Court of Justice was also confirmed by the Nice Treaty, he said.
"The claim that enlargement of the EU will open the floodgates to an internal EU migration from the east is an exercise in cynical misinformation being peddled by some opponents of the Nice Treaty," he said.
"There is absolutely no evidence that Ireland will have a problem with free movement of workers on the accession of the new member-states". In any case, he added, Ireland retained the freedom to take measures to protect the labour market.