The incorporation of the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights in a new EU treaty will not cede further powers from member-states to Brussels, the Government has insisted.
Speaking during yesterday's Oireachtas European Affairs Committee meeting, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr Dick Roche, said it would not affect the Republic's social and economic policies.
Instead, he said, the charter would be used to ensure that EU institutions such as the Commission were legally accountable to all citizens, and to guide the implementation by member-states of EU law.
The Convention on the Future of Europe set up one working group to examine the issues raised by incorporating the charter and by the EU's possible accession to the European Court of Human Rights.
Following Irish and British pressure, the working group agreed "sufficiently watertight" restrictions on the charter's application to make its scope and application "clear and certain", according to Mr Roche.
The Minister of State told the committee: "It isn't that we are fearful. But we are anxious to make sure that it stands the test and doesn't land us in a legal quagmire."
The former Taoiseach, Mr John Bruton, said the first 16 articles of a draft EU treaty published by the Convention last week set only what the EU would do, rather than how it would do it.
"It does not attribute powers between the Commission, the Council of Ministers and European Parliament. It does not specify the issues that will be dealt with inter-governmentally or the issues that will be dealt with federally," he said.
Reacting to the row in the United Kingdom over the use of the word "federal" in the draft treaty, Mr Bruton said: "The word 'federal' has been misinterpreted in England to mean the same thing as centralisation.
"It does not mean centralisation. It means that powers are exercised at different level."
Mr Bruton sits on the powerful 13-strong Presidium that leads the Convention.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Oireachtas committee, the Fine Gael TD, Mr Gay Mitchell, warned that the new treaty should not make it more difficult to do business in the EU.
