How can you tell the assessment from the assessor? Reactions to the outcome of the stormy, or at least disputatious, EU summit at Nice over the weekend depend greatly on the standpoint of the person concerned towards the European project in general.
"It was a reasonably good result for them," a senior Government official said about the efforts of his colleagues at Nice. But like most observers, he felt a referendum on the Treaty of Nice was probably inevitable.
The Government team managed to retain control over Ireland's taxation system. Other areas might come under EU control via the qualified majority voting system. But the alluring tax rates for foreign and especially US corporations, which Government sources see as a key to our current prosperity, remain intact.
The burden of the message coming from the Taoiseach and Mr Cowen in the lead-up to the final agreement was that taxation was what Americans call a "deal-breaker". It would have been interesting to see how they held up if Ireland had been isolated on this issue, but fortunately the British and Swedes had a similar agenda.
Ireland's voting strength on the Council of Ministers has been reduced, but the Government regards the change as a modest one and it is pleased to have retained parity with the Danes and the Finns. Besides, the larger states had to be compensated for agreeing to give up their second commissioner.
Ideally, Ireland would have liked to retain its single commissioner in perpetuity, but again Government sources expressed satisfaction that the eventual rotation process would apply to Germany as well as Ireland and to France as well as Luxembourg.
Perhaps surprisingly, Denmark, the home of referendums on Europe, seems unlikely to put the treaty to a vote - although there have already been calls for a vote from some Danish politicians. In Ireland a referendum seems much more likely, with a grudging acceptance even in quarters which favour a Yes vote but do not welcome the prospect of knocking on doors to make their case.
Anthony Coughlan, longtime opponent of EU integration, believes that if the Attorney General fails to advise the Government that a referendum is required, someone will follow the example of the late Raymond Crotty and launch a court challenge, forcing a referendum anyway.
"It's good to see that there's a general recognition growing that there will have to be a referendum on it," he said yesterday. He sees the treaty as another unwelcome phase in the EU's "permanent constitutional revolution".
There was a strong call for a referendum from Labour leader Ruairi Quinn, on grounds of democratic legitimacy and "regardless of any legal requirements". But he did not reveal his voting intentions, reserving final comment on the treaty until the release of the final text. He claimed the retention of the Irish veto on taxation was "a victory in a phoney war" but called the summit "an important milestone in the process of facilitating the entry of the applicant countries".
Mr Quinn's qualified critique of the Nice outcome was in contrast with the more full-blooded approach of the Green MEP, Patricia McKenna. She expressed astonishment at suggestions that Ireland "did well" in the negotiations on the treaty, which she described as "yet another deathknell" to democracy in Europe.
"Ireland lost its veto in about 34 new areas, 12 of which are in the sphere of justice and home affairs. Ireland's voting strength in the Council of Ministers has been greatly reduced," she said.
The talk around Leinster House today may well be focused on the prospect of losing three of the Republic's 15 European Parliament seats. Strasbourg has been the equivalent of the House of Lords to some Irish politicians coming to the end of a long career. Now there are three fewer plums in the basket. A redrawing of constituencies will be required, based on the results of the next census in April.
Given the lopsided distribution of population, the east is the likely winner. Already, different scenarios are in the air: each of the four constituencies could be a three-seater or, less plausibly, there might even be one constituency for the whole State.
Smaller parties such as Labour and the Greens would be under threat, along with independents.
The Nice Summit was about preparing for enlargement. Eleven years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, eastern Europe is still out in the cold. Now the groundwork has been laid; member-states have made concessions in some areas and received compensation in others.
Ireland is officially in favour of enlargement as a means of shoring up peace and stability as well as opening up a new market of up to 160 million people. But there will be a downside for, for instance, Irish and Danish farmers seeking to sell their produce against cheaper Polish and Hungarian goods.
This was the longest summit in European history and some of the Irish participants were reminded of the near-interminable talks which finally produced the Good Friday agreement. However, it was much more bloodless; the immediate threat to the life and limb of the general public was not a factor.
Ireland succeeded in keeping covetous eyes off the seven votes it secured under the reweighting process. For a while, candidate-member Lithuania, with a near-equal population to the Republic, seemed likely to get only five. Fortunately, a decision was made to lift the Baltic state up to seven and nobody thought to reduce Dublin to the same voting strength as Vilnius.
"It's a pretty good deal overall," said one Irish participant. However, the grand European vision was little in evidence, with self-interest winning out over idealism most of the time. The document cobbled together in the end may not be the stuff dreams are made on, but failure to achieve it would have been a major setback for the European enterprise.