Support by Ireland's major parties for current levels of EU political integration is shown in a survey of party and candidate attitudes carried out by The Irish Times ahead of this week's European elections.
But significant differences between Fianna Fail and both Fine Gael and Labour emerge from the party responses on how or whether to take that integration forward.
The questionnaire to Fianna Fail was filled in by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, himself. The party opposes any further reduction in national vetoes, any extension of the legislative powers of MEPs, or any change in the method of election of the president of the commission, currently nominated by member-states.
Fine Gael, Labour, the Greens, Sinn Fein, the Natural Law Party, and three of the Independents support some form of extension of the franchise for electing the president of the commission. There is unanimous support for allowing MEPs the right to sack individual commissioners.
The Greens insist that they support more EU integration in genuinely international issues such as the environment and human rights, while they say the Union should have less power in other areas "such as economics". Sinn Fein and the two smaller parties insist that integration has gone far enough.
There is also strong support for more powers over the Union for national parliaments.
Several of the parties said that they were uneasy about the unqualified "yes or no" format of the questionnaire, and that their response - "unsure/not happy with question" - usually referred to the latter alternative.
Labour also insisted that on some issues, "there are varying views within the party". Presumably, the implication is that it is not fair in such cases to ask what party policy is.
Yet for all its crudeness and imprecision, the completed questionnaires reveal more than the posters with their smiling faces and anodyne slogans. The exercise does show up interesting divergences between many of the parties and candidates.
On defence there are striking divisions over whether NATO actions in Kosovo were warranted. There is a willingness to contemplate participation in new EU defence structures and a unanimity, with one exception, against any involvement in NATO.
Ireland's traditional demand for UN legitimation for all military action is unanimously supported.
Fine Gael qualified its opposition to the Government's defence of NATO by insisting that the party "believes that while NATO action in Kosovo was justified, the particular action taken may have done more harm than good."
The Natural Law Party argues on defence that "to promote and maintain harmony in the world family of sovereign nations a group of 7,000 experts in Natural Law technologies will be maintained on each continent by the EU . . . rendering obsolete the present EU debate on the framework for military alliances."
All the respondents back the key Irish Intergovernmental Conference demand that each state should retain a commissioner even after enlargement.
All support greater EU co-operation on crime and immigration issues. The Christian Solidarity Party is alone in opposing greater EU involvement in equality issues.
All support, or are enthusiastic about, the EU doing more for the environment. But only the Natural Law Party, Mr Denis Riordan (Munster), and Father Liam Sharkey (Connacht-Ulster) were willing to back water metering.
Mr Pat Cox (Munster) made clear that he saw the EU's jobs role as being not so much in creating employment as reforming labour and capital markets. The Greens argue that growth is not the solution to unemployment.
All agree that Ireland must do more to share the burden of the Kosovo refugee crisis.
As for Mr Joe Higgins TD, the Socialist Party takes such a "fundamentally different position from all the establishment political parties" that "the questions proferred by The Irish Times cannot really do justice to our stand on the main issues."
However, he is opposed to genetically modified organisms, water metering, the PFP and NATO. He stands for a "voluntary confederation of socialist states organised to meet the needs of working people."