The former Taoiseach, Mr John Bruton has accused the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, of creating difficulties for the Government in negotiations on the future of the European Union by "making a big song-and-dance"about issues that were not central to the national interest.
Mr Bruton chaired a working group at the Convention on the Future of Europe, which recently produced a report on justice and home affairs issues. Mr McDowell objected to certain recommendations in the Bruton report, particularly the possible extension of qualified majority voting (QMV) in framing harmonised EU laws to deal with a specific list of serious cross-border crimes.
"He seems to be almost on a crusade," Mr Bruton said. "If Ireland is saying No to everything, we are likely to find ourselves isolated." It might be in Ireland's interest to block QMV on taxation but perhaps not on certain other issues.
"That should be weighed up collectively rather than by individual Ministers." Mr McDowell had been "singling out his differences with the one committee chaired by another Irish person".
But Department of Justice sources denied that the Minister was at odds with Government policy and accused Mr Bruton of engaging in "spin". Suggestions that Mr McDowell was at loggerheads with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, were described as "greatly exaggerated". There was "no problem" in the Government.
The Minister for Justice was simply expressing concern that the system of trial by jury could be undermined by qualified majority voting, the sources added. There would also be difficulties with a continental-style inquisitorial system, as innocent people could be held on remand for a long time.
Senior Fianna Fáil sources said there was "no big racket" over Mr McDowell's comments. Suggestions of a rift between himself and Mr Cowen were dismissed as "lazy labelling". In fact, the sources said, Mr Cowen had "no problem with McDowell's robust stance". Ireland's "corpus of rights can't be ridden over roughshod". Every policy area should be analysed with equal rigour, the Fianna Fáil sources concluded.
However, speaking to a variety of political and official sources this week, it was clear that the momentum generated at the Convention on the Future of Europe has come home forcibly to the Government in recent weeks.
There seems to be a new urgency about ensuring that Ireland's voice is heard and its opinions fully noted in the Convention's deliberations, which are aimed at producing a draft constitutional treaty for the EU which would go forward to an intergovernmental conference of the member-states.
The idea that such a document would merely aspire to making EU law more comprehensible and accessible to ordinary citizens has been superseded to a considerable extent by the ambition of the Convention's chairman, Mr Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, to bring about fundamental institutional change. France and Germany, in particular, are seen as pursuing an outcome that would benefit the larger states. (One Government source called it a "stitch-up".)
The Government feels it has much in common with other small states which will be joining the EU as part of the enlargement process.
Governments have no particular status in the Convention and the fast-moving pace of events there may make it more difficult to halt or modify unwelcome proposals in the intergovernmental conference.
A speech by Mr Cowen at the Institute of European Affairs on January 15th is being billed in advance as a significant statement on Ireland's negotiating stance.