Electioneering politicians had failed to address the State's role in Europe following the rejection of the Nice Treaty, former Attorney General Mr John Rogers SC said at the Brehon Law School this weekend.
Mr Rogers, who addressed the school in Ballyvaughan, Co Clare, on "Ireland and the Nice Treaty - At the Crossroads", said it would be constitutionally suspect and an arrogant and undemocratic rejection of the will of the people if ratification of an unrevised treaty was pursued.
No government should accept that further negotiation of the treaty was off limits, he said. To do so would be a rejection of the expressed will of the people.
He said "massive damage" had been done to the image of the EU as a political entity with a democratic base because the State's leaders were telling their people, "you may not like it [the treaty] but you will have to lump it".
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, had not acted as though he had accepted the will of the people.
Mr Rogers, who campaigned for a No vote in last year's referendum, said no debate had taken place in the election campaign about how the next government would deal with the issues arising from the people's decision.
"What is needed is to address coolly how the deficit of democracy in the EC and the EU can be transformed."
There had been an attempt to put "the frighteners" on the citizen and much talk that people had let themselves down and they would be faced with the choice of being in or out of the union.
"This is nonsense," he said. "We are in the EU and we will remain in the EU and we cannot be expelled from the EU without every member-state of the EU denouncing the treaties which created it."
Mr Roger Cole, the chairman of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, said if the "political elite" rejected the democratic decision, it was opening the door for a Le Pen-type organisation to be established in the Republic.
Mr Tommie Gorman of RTÉ referred to the attack by a bystander on the Fine Gael leader, Mr Michael Noonan, last week, saying a society was being built which was keen to talk about custard pies. Nobody had referred to Europe helping the Republic reach a state of development for which all politicians were clapping themselves on the back.
"With all the talk that is going on at the moment in our election debates, why, on any side of the critical divide, has no one talked about our position in Europe?"
It was an extremely sad, limiting situation, he said, that the practice for the health service was to look to the UK and US health systems.
Paul Gillespie, foreign editor of The Irish Times, said the Nice Treaty was about enlargement and uniting the continent for the first time in its history.
If the Republic voted No on the Nice Treaty a second time, it would be to effectively opt out of the EU political process and marginalise itself.