The Government has completely rejected an effort by the Convention on the Future of Europe to create a European public prosecutor and opposed proposals to create common EU criminal justice rules.
Ruling out an EU-style director of public prosecutions, the Government said "no convincing or compelling case" had been made. "The proposed arrangements do not respect the different legal traditions of member-states," it declared.
In all, the Minister of State for Europe, Mr Dick Roche, has put forward 18 pages of amendments to the original proposals drafted by the convention, headed by former French president, Mr Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
EU member-states should move to mutually recognise each other's legal systems, rather than attempting to drift down the road towards creating any common legal rules, said the Irish amendments.
The Government suggests that the EU should "adopt measures to ensure mutual recognition of judicial decisions", rather than the convention's wording which seeks "the free movement of documents and judgments".
The convention's proposals to improve judicial co-operation in civil issues have been equally played down by the Government, which claims substantial support for its objections.
"We are in the middle ground," said Mr Roche.
The convention has proposed that the Union should develop "judicial co-operation in civil matters based on the principle of mutual recognition of judgments and decisions in extrajudicial cases".
However, the Government's more cautious amendment proposes that judicial co-operation in civil matters should continue to be directed towards "the proper functioning of the internal market".
Article 16 of the convention's proposed treaty would allow the EU to adopt minimum rules on the admissibility of evidence and the definition of the rights of both suspected criminals and victims.
In a commentary, the document submitted by Mr Roche states: "It should be clear that this article is not attempting to harmonise or to approximate member- states' law, but rather to identify the minimum standards necessary to facilitate the mutual recognition of each other's judicial decisions.
"Because of the particularly sensitive nature of this area, unanimity is the appropriate decision-making procedure and member- states must be free to require higher standards where they wish to do so," it said.
Yesterday, the Minister of State said the Irish reply had been approved by the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, who has been openly scathing of some of the justice and home affairs ideas emanating from Brussels.
"The Minister of Justice has done a huge amount of work on this. He has been personally involved in drawing up the responses. Our responses are more realistic," Mr Roche told The Irish Times.
Meanwhile, the Government has warned that European Commission attempts to create common procedural safeguards for suspects and defendants will be blocked, unless they abide by the Irish Constitution.
The Commission's Green Paper "raises a number of important questions," the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs, chaired by Fine Gael TD Mr Gay Mitchell has said.
The Commission has sought replies from the member-states by May.
It proposes common rules governing access to legal representation, interpretation and translation,.
In addition, the Commission suggests that common rules be created to ensure that suspects and defendants are notified of their legal rights, and to guarantee that vulnerable suspects are especially protected.
In a briefing paper for the European Affairs Committee, the Department of Justice pointed out that Mr McDowell would "question whether there is EU competence for standardisation of criminal procedural law".