As he heads for the EU summit in Gothenburg this week, the Taoiseach will be aware that saving the Nice Treaty may compromise his freedom to call the next general election at any time of his choosing between now and June of next year.
Mr Ahern must first decide whether to run a second Nice referendum on the same day as an election. Current indications are that he will want to avoid this and time a referendum for after June, when it could not interfere with election plans.
However, his EU partners may this week press for an earlier date, thus compounding Mr Ahern's political mess.
Holding Nice on the same day as a general election would certainly bring the vote out but it could also be electorally disastrous for the Government and, indeed, the other establishment political parties.
This is because putting Nice to the people again will be portrayed by No campaigners as an anti-democratic act. Doing this with an election campaign would hand Sinn Fein, the Green Party and Independents the perfect issue with which to galvanise the anti-politician vote. It would also give them equal access to the airwaves to debate the treaty.
So Mr Ahern may want to hold off on Nice until towards the end of 2002, by which time the election will have taken place. However, there were indications from Brussels over the weekend that our partners may have other ideas. EU leaders are anxious to end the uncertainty caused by the Irish vote.
The broader political damage is to the State's relations with the EU. Successive governments have sought to portray the State as the most enthusiastic of Europeans and as a role model for the central and east European states queuing to join.
However, from now on Ireland's enthusiasm for the EU will be seen as qualified. "It will never be the same again," said a diplomat.
What is most galling for the Taoiseach and his Ministers is that the political mess was avoidable. A half-decent campaign would have won it. The losing margin was small: had the Government managed to motivate even a modest number of extra voters to come out it could have been carried.
The blame game is on. Already people around the Taoiseach are pointing the finger at Ministers and Ministers of State for not getting the vote out. Remarks over the past six months from three Ministers - Ms Harney, Mr McCreevy and Ms de Valera - are with hindsight being seen by some of their colleagues as deeply unhelpful.
Ms Harney accused Europe of promoting "job-destroying policies"; Mr McCreevy said our EU partners were jealous of Ireland's economic success; while Ms de Valera suggested the EU sometimes had a negative effect on Irish culture. All of this served to weaken the traditional majority view of the EU being "a good thing".
In the final days of the campaign, some Government figures were irritated at the decisions of Mr Lionel Jospin and Mr Romano Prodi to put forward their most ambitious integrationist plans.
Similarly, they ask whether the denouement of the squabble between Ireland and Brussels over budgetary policy really had to take place on the eve of the referendum.
Some Government figures are also blaming the McKenna judgment which stops them spending taxpayers' money on a partisan campaign. They also blame the Referendum Commission, whose advertisements, they say, had the effect of confirming people in their belief that the treaty was hopelessly confusing.
It seems the Taoiseach and the Government simply thought that despite the warning signs, they would just about get away with it.
But it is not as if they weren't warned. As early as March 30th, the Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, wrote to the Taoiseach calling for a longer debate on Nice, giving a strikingly accurate prediction of what would happen with a June poll.
The people, he warned, could vote down the treaty as they would see it as "an establishment conspiracy, Irish and European, which is to be passed through without adequate explanation or time for debate".
He said voters did not like being asked to decide on something on which they were ill-informed; they were suspicious of unanimity between the political parties; they didn't understand the treaty; and the strong cynicism about politics could ensure the treaty was defeated.
Indeed, during the campaign Mr Quinn caused the abandonment of a plan for a joint photocall with Mr Ahern and the Fine Gael leader, Mr Michael Noonan, on the grounds that a united front by the political establishment would be counterproductive.
Labour, therefore, has credibility in laying the blame on a serious misjudgment by the Taoiseach. Of course, the opposition parties also ran pretty modest campaigns. Both produced a certain number of posters, although Fine Gael's appeared designed primarily to get local candidates' names on local lampposts rather than win a Yes vote. None of the parties brought any significant number of activists out to canvass door-to-door.