The Labour party will campaign against any reworked version of the Lisbon treaty if it is put to Irish voters again following last week’s emphatic No.

Eamon Gilmore told colleagues it would be an insult to put the same package to Irish voters again after a 110,000 majority rejected it. A source close to the Labour leader said: “Our party will say No to Lisbon II. We are opposed to any move to put this to the Irish voters a second time.

“There seems to be various moves afoot, both at home and abroad, to proceed with Lisbon in some form. Lisbon is dead and that is Eamon Gilmore’s clear position. We will oppose it if it comes before the Dail and if it goes before the people we will campaign against it.”

Opposition from Labour would make it even more unlikely that the Irish government would get a Yes vote at the second time of asking. It was unable to get a majority with the support of Labour and Fine Gael in last week’s vote.

Dick Roche, the European affairs minister, said yesterday that his fear was that Ireland would get left behind and some EU countries could proceed with a two-speed Europe.

He said the government would have to conduct a similar process to that after the defeat of the first Nice referendum in 2001. “We have to comb through this result and find out what the issues were, in the same detail as we did previously with Nice, and then see if can we construct solutions,” Roche said.

“Europe has no stomach for another period of protracted debate. It took eight years to get where we are. There were huge concessions given to small and medium countries. If we have to go back into negotiations, we are never going to be in as strong a position.”

Roche will join Micheal Martin in Luxembourg tomorrow as he briefs other foreign ministers at the general affairs and external relations council in advance of Brian Cowen’s meeting with heads of state in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

Fine Gael has stopped short of pledging opposition to a Lisbon re-run but a spokesman said there was no merit in putting the same treaty to the Irish people again.

Asked on Friday if he favoured the Irish voters being asked to vote on a different version of the Lisbon treaty, Enda Kenny the Fine Gael leader, said: “We made it perfectly clear that there would not be a second offer in this case.

“The governments have to look at the decision the Irish people have made, they have spoken quite clearly on this, and must decide how best to move the concept of the European process from here.

Conor Lenihan, the integration minister, said yesterday he could not see a situation whereby the government could put this matter to the people again. The result was damaging to our interests in Europe and we had suffered a loss of influence as a result, he said. To embark upon the same exercise again would be to risk inflicting further damage on our interests.

“I am not ruling out the possibility that it could be voted on again but I really think it would take a huge amount of effort on the government’s and indeed on Europe’s part to put this question again,” he said.

While Gilmore and Kenny were agreed that the Lisbon treaty was dead, the taoiseach conspicuously avoided making a similar declaration.

“We need to pause to absorb what has happened and why, and to consult widely at home with our European partners,” Cowen said.

“I will be devoting my full political energies to finding a way forward for our country which needs to take into account the concerns reflected by the referendum result.”

Peter Power, a junior minister at foreign affairs, said: “The EU has a long and distinguished history of being able to find solutions to what seems at the outset to be the most intractable of situations.”

France and Germany were yesterday still leading the charge to keep the Lisbon treaty alive. Jean-Pierre Jouyet, France’s Europe minister, said another “legal arrangement” should be found to bypass the Irish No vote and allow the other 26 EU member states to plough ahead with ratification.

“There are always possibilities to find specific methods of co-operating,” he said. “The most important thing is that the ratification process must continue in the other countries.”

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