The Attorney General, Mr Michael McDowell, is the latest member of the Government to express concern about the future direction of the European Union.
Addressing the Institute of European Affairs in Dublin last night, he said there was a sharp division between the federalist European project and what the Irish people wanted, and the people should not allow themselves to be silenced by a sense of gratitude or inhibited by a sense of relative size.
Mr McDowell pointed out that he was speaking in a personal capacity. His script was not circulated by the Government Information Services.
"Our priority must be to take an active role in developing and articulating a model of Europe which we want to see", He said. "If we confine ourselves to throat clearances of disapproval, we surrender the political issue to others."
He also said he agreed with his Labour predecessor as Attorney General, Mr John Rogers SC, regarding the absence in practice of "real democratic input" and accountability in what were potentially vital aspects of legislation affecting our rights as citizens.
There was a strong case, he said, for a far-reaching reform of the interaction of the Oireachtas with European policy and legislative affairs.
He regarded it as "indefensible" that we did not have something similar to the UK system, where the House of Lords conducted a "sophisticated pre-examination" of regulations and directives.
It was a "striking proposition", he said, that Irish Government ministers were technically free to negotiate a regulation or directive which, as a matter of European and Irish law, the Oireachtas was bound to accept.
On the face of it, he said, this was greatly at odds with the spirit of the Constitution. "With any other legislative measure, the Oireachtas has the power to reverse a decision with which it disagrees. A minister who makes a delegated legislative decision himself faces the sack; the decision itself faces reversal . . . But, in the context of the EU, a regulation or directive is effectively irreversible, once made."
He was in favour of ratification of the Treaty of Nice because he believed it was necessary to separate the issues of enlargement and integration, but it had always been apparent to him that "Nice would contain little by way of self-interested `good news' for the Irish voter".
Mr McDowell said he did not agree with the notion that the Irish electorate did not want the EU to enlarge or did not want to admit new member-states.
He said suggestions that we were a society of "economic ingrates who, having crossed the moat, were attempting to pull up the drawbridge on other applicants" were unjustified.
The text of Mr McDowell's address is on The Irish Times website at www.ireland.com