THE GOVERNMENT would have no difficulty in holding a referendum amending the EU treaty if it was required, Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore told the Dáil.

He said that senior Government officials were involved on a day-to-day basis in the negotiations.

“We have an obligation to work in a way that complies with the Constitution,” he added.

Mr Gilmore was replying to Padraig MacLochlainn (Sinn Féin), who asked if Ireland’s negotiating team was trying to avoid a referendum.

“Is it trying to change the text to avoid the need for one?” asked Mr MacLochlainn.

“Is the Government trying to avoid its responsibility of putting this before the people?”

Mr Gilmore said the Government’s primary objective was to work with others in Europe to bring stability in the first instance to the euro and the euro zone, and to ensure that the European economy grew.

The aim, he added, was to secure the best possible deal and arrangement for the taxpayers and the public.

Mr MacLochlainn said that it was widely agreed that the three crises across Europe related to banking, sovereign debt and investment.

He said what had been put before Ireland by European leaders did not provide a solution to any of them.

“They have focused on, for bizarre reasons, the issue of permanent austerity to drive down wages and conditions and so on, and to cut and privatise public services as a panacea to what is fundamentally a dramatic failure in one sector of the economy – banking,” he added.

Insisting that all the issues referred to were being addressed, Mr Gilmore said the European Central Bank had agreed prior to Christmas to make a very substantial amount of money available over a three-year period to the banking system throughout Europe.

He said that the EU council meeting, convened for January 30th, would be directly addressing the issues of jobs and growth in the euro area.

The problem of sovereign debt varied from one country to another, said Mr Gilmore.

“In the case of this country, we are already part of a programme,” he added.

“We must meet the terms of that programme.”

The terms, which were currently being discussed, were not any more onerous than the terms of the programme Ireland was already involved in.

Mr Gilmore said some of the conditions, such as the 60 per cent debt to GDP ratio, were already part of the Stability and Growth Pact, which was a condition of Ireland’s euro membership.