Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said he has "no difficulty" with a simplified EU constitutional treaty, but has warned that allowing old disagreements to be revived would dilute the document's substance.
Mr Ahern was speaking in Berlin on his first foreign trip since the general election ahead of EU talks with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, currently president of the European Council.
At next month's EU summit, Germany hopes to present a rescue plan for the constitutional treaty, in limbo since it was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.
Currently, Berlin is working on a plan to simplify the treaty and strip out constitutional trappings that some fear could supercede national sovereignty. "The big thing is to preserve the substance and the content of the treaty. As far as simplifying it, we have no difficulty with that," Mr Ahern said.
He said he would have no problem with changes, many of which he himself suggested during Ireland's EU presidency in 2004. Those changes were not made at the time, he said, because the consensus then was to leave everything in the document rather than take anything out.
"The process of giving substance and balance, those are the issues that are important otherwise we are reopening things we've been through before and we don't need that, those arguments are over." One argument resolved under Mr Ahern's chairmanship, the issue of voting weights, has resurfaced now on Dr Merkel's watch. Poland is once again opposed to proposed voting changes which would reduce its influence on EU decision-making.
A leading Polish official stirred things up in a radio interview by suggesting that Germany, not Poland, was the problem in the discussion of the proposed new voting system and that the existing proposal would allow a "dangerous overestimation" of Berlin.
Marek Cicochki, one of Poland's negotiators in treaty talks, suggested that Germany has "always been a challenge to Europe" and is seeking "a significant political advantage over others".
Dr Merkel declined to respond to the charge directly, saying only she hoped "all countries presume the best about the motives of others; that is what I do". She congratulated Mr Ahern on his "good election result" and thanked Ireland for a "constructive co-operation that has made our presidency very simple to make progress".
Mr Ahern said he would support German efforts for an inter-governmental conference with a "precise and limited mandate".