The Government has now turned its attention to dealing with the consequences of the result following the defeat of the Yes campaign in the referendum on the Nice Treaty. The rejection is expected to be raised at a meeting of European Foreign Ministers in Luxembourg on Monday which will be attended by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen. The Taoiseach has been briefing other EU leaders on the referendum result ahead of next week's EU summit meeting in Gothenburg.
The Nice Treaty was rejected by 54% of voters in yesterday's referendum. The European Commission President, Romano Prodi, has indicated that he wants to see the Government put the Nice Treaty to a second referendum before the end of next year. Bertie Ahern has spoken by telephone to a number of EU leaders, and has arranged follow-up meetings next week.
The voters have handed the Government and the rest of the European Union, a major political headache by rejecting the Nice Treaty, as it cannot come into force unless it is ratified in every member state. After the 54% No vote was officially confirmed, the Taoiseach expressed his disappointment, while anti-Nice campaigners called for the Treaty to be renegotiated. Changes to the substance of the Treaty were ruled out by European Commission President Romano Prodi.
The Government's chief negotiator of the Nice Treaty, Noel Dorr, has said there would be a great unwillingness on behalf of Ireland's EU partners to re-open negotiations on the Treaty. Mr Dorr said politicians must try to understand the message of the electorate. There are also likely to be questions raised about the way referenda are run, with some Yes campaigners critical of the role of the independent Referendum Commission. At just 34%, turnout on Thursday was among the lowest on record for Constitutional referenda.
In another development, the Taoiseach is to ask Junior Minister Eamon O'Cúiv for an undertaking that he will not publicly oppose Government policy, after he revealed he voted No in the referendum. Mr O'Cúiv said tonight that he voted No because European bureaucrats were seeking too much power. However, he said that as a Minister he accepted Government policy and had done all that was required of him to support the Treaty.
Meanwhile, the president of one of the largest political groups in Europe, the Christian Democrats, has suggested the outcome of Ireland's Nice Treaty Referendum has created a "dismal muddle" for the EU. Wilfried Martens, a former Belgian prime minister, said that many of those who voted No were confused into thinking that endorsing Nice would compromise Irish neutrality but this plainly had nothing at all to do with it.
Mr Martens said a good proportion of the voters in Ireland were showing the same failure of solidarity that is surfacing elsewhere within the EU about the future financing of an enlarged Europe. He said that the Irish voters were following the lead shown by some larger member states, involving an attitude of "self-interest and damn the rest". The Christian Democrats, or European People's Party, is the largest group in the European Parliament - and its members include the Fine Gael MEPs, Dana and the Ulster Unionist, Jim Nicholson.
Austria's far-right Freedom Party has said that it will seek a referendum on plans to enlarge the European Union, following Ireland's rejection of the Nice Treaty. The party, which is a junior partner in the country's centre-right coalition, said that Ireland's vote against the Treaty proved there was a "crisis of trust" between the European Union and its citizens. The anti-immigrant Freedom Party has made no secret of its ambivalence towards the EU, the single currency and the expansion of the 15-member bloc.
