The Northern Ireland Agreement was negotiated as a package and would stand or fall as a totality North and South, the Taoiseach said yesterday. Mr Ahern was answering questions from deputies at the end of the debate on the legislation paving the way for the referendum on the Agreement next month.

He said that on the North-South bodies the essential point was that structures were being created to enable North and South to work together in partnership on all matters within the competence of both administrations.

"It is an enormous and unprecedented step forward in terms of bringing together the different traditions on the island," he said.

The areas to be covered by the implementation bodies will be for final decision between the two administrations North and South before the end of October.

Proposed Article 29 (7) (2) enabled any new institution to be conferred with powers in addition to or in substitution for any person or organ of State. This would allow the jurisdiction of the courts to be excluded in favour of an all-Ireland court, or dispute resolution mechanism such as an arbitration body.

However, it was clear the jurisdiction of the courts in relation to cases which involved questions of the validity of any law was not affected by this provision, and such questions remained matters for the High Court and Supreme Court on appeal. So the amendment suggested by Mr Bruton was not necessary.

"In principle it is undesirable to exclude the courts' jurisdiction, but we've sought to make things more tight, or tight enough to leave nothing for a court to consider as a justifiable controversy being continued," Mr Ahern said.

Mr Bruton had raised the point that the jurisdiction was not defined. The Taoiseach said there was no need to insert a definition, The courts had held on the basis of existing Article 3 of the 1937 Constitution that the area of jurisdiction as defined in Article 3 meant Ireland minus the area of Northern Ireland. This had not been changed.

On the question of whether the Oireachtas would be asked to approve the British-Irish agreement, the answer was "yes". A separate motion would be brought before the House for approval of the agreement once the referendum had been passed and after the President had signed the amendment of the Constitutional Bill.

The mechanism which would be established under the new Article 3 was the consent of the majority of people, democratically expressed in both parts of the island, and thus reflecting the agreed approach to self-determination and consent.

Mr Michael O'Kennedy (FF), co-chairman of the British-Irish Parliamentary Body, said a special meeting would be convened in Dublin shortly which would enable the members of the body, as the elected representatives of the supreme parliaments of Britain and Ireland, to give their endorsement on behalf of the people they represented as legislators to the achievements of this agreement.

Mr Joe Higgins (Socialist Party, Dublin West), said the structures of the agreement envisaged, in his view, a permanent chasm to exist between the communities and the institutionalisation of sectarianism rather than a coming together of peoples in a real unity. Unfortunately, the choice before the people in regard to the referendum voting was very stark, he said. "If the referendum were to fail North and South it is the reactionary sectarians on both sides who will come back on to the stage with a vengeance," Mr Higgins said.