Call for the establishment of a Forum for Europe to discuss the evolving shape and structure of the EU has been made by the leader of the Labour Party, Mr Ruairi Quinn.
He also warned that people should not take a Yes victory in the Nice referendum for granted.
Mr Quinn told the German-Irish Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Dublin yesterday that the Forum for Europe should be similar to the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation which had facilitated progress in the peace process.
It would have an independent chair and secretariat and hear indepth submissions from a wide range of sources. There was not much room in the media for an extended, reflective debate.
On the Nice Treaty, he warned that voters might abstain because "many people don't understand what it is about".
It was a mistake to hold the referendum in June instead of waiting for autumn.
He urged the employers in the audience to hold a "Day of Nice" in their companies, not for the purpose of swaying the vote but to facilitate discussion.
Paying tribute to the contributions made to the debate on the future of Europe by leading German politicians, Mr Quinn posed the question: "What will the final shape of Europe be when it is finished?"
He recalled how the phrase "an ever-closer union of the peoples of Europe" had been in circulation for 40 years, but who would have thought that so many countries would now be members of the EU or seeking to join?
Charles de Gaulle had spoken of a "Europe of the nations" stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals.
Should it be a federation like the United States? Many people, himself included, said it should not.
Member-states in the EU had progressively decided to share sovereignty. If you had predicted 10 or 15 years ago that there would be a common European currency and a European Central Bank people would have said "this is outlandish visionary talk ".
Given the process of change there was no reason to suppose that we had arrived at the end of history. "We in the Labour Party believe that Ireland - not just European leaders - and Ireland's political leaders have got to initiate a debate about the final shape of the European Union."
For example the constitutional documentation of the EU was "immensely opaque".