The Government is actively considering amendments to Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution which would effectively convert the territorial claim to Northern Ireland to an aspiration to Irish unity.
It has also been learned that Dublin is not dismissing out of hand Ulster Unionist proposals for arrangements under which members of the emerging Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly might sit alongside opposite numbers from London, Belfast and Dublin to consider issues of mutual interest throughout these islands.
This was made clear last night as the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, prepared for his first meeting with Mr David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, since coming to power.
Mr Ahern and Mr Trimble will each lead five-strong delegations into potentially crucial talks later this morning in London. Mr Trimble will be left in no doubt that the Government sees "balanced" constitutional change - embracing the Constitution and the 1920 Government of Ireland Act - as integral to any durable political settlement. Government draftsmen are "looking at the wording" of possible constitutional amendments, the substance of which might be found in the terms of recommendations which emerged from the 1967 Review of the Constitution.
The Irish Times has been told that the Taoiseach will listen sympathetically to Mr Trimble's ideas for a new structural arrangement covering "the relationships between the component parts of these islands". Under the UUP plan, this would see the two sovereign governments working in matters of mutual interest alongside representatives of a new administration in Belfast and members of the emerging Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly. However, the Taoiseach and his team will make it clear to Mr Trimble that they would not be prepared to see either the North/South relationship or the existing Inter-Governmental Conference "subsumed" by such an arrangement.
Irish sources say that while they are prepared to look at "architecture" expressing Mr Trimble's East/West dimension and "the totality of relationships" within these islands, there is "no easy parallel" with a society that has been at war.
Future arrangements for the government of Northern Ireland and the need for power-sharing, together with the scale of cross-Border institutional links, will dominate today's meeting, which Mr Ahern hopes will be the first in a series with the UUP.
He is likely to insist that constitutional change and cross-Border institutions with "executive powers" are essential to any deal likely to prove durable. The Taoiseach is also certain to resist UUP moves - discussed with the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, over recent weeks - to jettison proposals in the Joint Framework Documents which would give London and Dublin power to intervene in the event of North-South bodies failing to work.
Ministers, and northern nationalist leaders, see UUP opposition to that default mechanism as consistent with the party's insistence that - again contrary to the Framework Proposals - cross-Border bodies should not be autonomous, free-standing or have the power to develop and extend their brief.
The Government is aware that, on any analysis of declared positions, the prospects for substantive agreement appear remote.
However, the continuing hope is that the UUP, like other parties, is in "pre-negotiation mode" and that all sides will respond imaginatively to the two governments' attempts to start constructing the outline of a settlement package.