The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, said yesterday that the Government had never been consulted on British plans to introduce a national identity card, despite possible implications for the common travel area between the two countries.
The British cabinet yesterday gave its approval in principle to the introduction of identity cards, according to a Downing Street spokesman, but put off to a later date any decision as to when the cards should be made compulsory.
Opponents of the identity card in Britain argue that it would be unworkable unless the Republic also had an identity card.
Mr McDowell said his instinct was against having such a card here.
He had no objection to a card that was simply a substitute for a passport, but was opposed to any attempt to make carrying such a card compulsory.
"Being required to carry identity alters the relationship between the police and the individual. It means if you don't have or carry on you such a card, you are technically committing a criminal offence.
"By implication, it confers on police the right to stop anyone and ask them who they are." Asked whether the British government had discussed the issue with Dublin, he said: "We have never been consulted on the matter."
Mr McDowell was speaking after a EU meeting of justice and home affairs ministers in Brussels. The British delegation was led by a junior Home Office minister, Ms Caroline Flint, because the Home Secretary, Mr David Blunkett, was presenting the case for ID cards at the cabinet meeting.
The introduction of an identity card would "require huge reflection", Mr McDowell said, adding that, historically, identity cards had been used to discriminate against minorities.
"There is a balance to be struck between the interests of the state and the rights of the individuals," he said.
Citing "800 years of common law history", he said it was a fundamental philosophy of common law countries that citizens were not obliged to carry anything about them.
Mr McDowell also stressed the strengths of common law when questioned once more about how the judicial authorities should deal with organised gangs in the wake of the collapse of a trial in Limerick this week.
He said he had noted the call from the Garda Representatives Association that such offences should be dealt with by the Special Criminal Court. The legal basis for using the SCC was simple, he said. It had first to be shown that the usual criminal court was inadequate.
The question of a witness's unwillingness to testify was not in itself an argument for shifting trials to a special court, although the intimidation of witnesses would be a different matter.
"There is a mechanism. The DPP has to form an opinion that ordinary courts would be inadequate," the Minister for Justice said.