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RESTORING AN EU commissioner permanently to member states is simply "non-negotiable" in the aftermath of the Irish No vote on Lisbon, former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing maintains.

"It isn't reasonable. There will be Irish commissioners, but by rotation," he told The Irish Timesin an interview yesterday. The commissioner issue is seen as key by many to making the treaty acceptable to voters in any new ballot. And Mr Giscard, who served as president of the convention that drafted the failed European constitution, angrily denounced as "dishonest" the repeated use of a quotation attributed to him by Irish No campaigners during the Lisbon referendum.