Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said that Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy would come to Ireland to boost his campaign to pass the EU reform treaty in a referendum next year.
Ireland is the only country due to hold a referendum next year to ratify the treaty, signed by EU leaders in Lisbon yesterday as a replacement for the doomed EU constitution rejected by Dutch and French voters in 2005.
'I have invited Angela Merkel and she said today she will attend. President Sarkozy also already told me he will come to help us out,' Mr Ahern told reporters after a summit in Brussels.
EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and other members of the EU's executive will also be on hand ahead of the vote, which is scheduled to take place in the first half of next year.
Mr Ahern expressed concerns over France's veteran far-right activist Jean-Marie Le Pen and his allies who said they will go to Ireland next year to help 'No' campaigners.
'They will be coming, we know that and of course it is a concern. More importantly for us is the money that they may also bring with them as well,' Mr Ahern said of campaign funding.
'We on our side will of course be governed by rules on transparency, but they may not play by the same rules.'
The EU's other 26 nations are due to ratify the document - to be known as the Lisbon Treaty - through the much more predictable route of their parliaments.
A rejection in just one country is enough to stop the treaty taking effect.
