Nicolas Sarkozy ambled over to the microphone with an inexplicable grin across his face. Still panting after rushing late into the press conference at the G8 summit in Japan, he apologised that his meeting with Vladimir Putin, prime minister of Russia, had run on so long.

“How do you want to proceed, do I answer your questions?” he asked the bemused journalists, smiling like an apologetic schoolboy. Perhaps it was jet lag, maybe it was nothing more than the joie de vivre Sarkozy usually exudes, or could it have been that the French president had enjoyed too much vodka or vin rouge over lunch?

The video of the event has had millions of “hits” on YouTube, adding to the legend that is growing around France’s colourful and controversial leader. Is Sarkozy a presidential playboy, a political dilettante more concerned with the trappings of celebrity than the responsibilities of leadership in a mature democracy?

Is he the man Ireland wants as president of the European Council of Ministers during an economic downturn and in the middle of the political vacuum created by our No vote on the Lisbon treaty?

Sarkozy is a man in a hurry, and Ireland’s No vote has put the brakes on what he had planned for his six-month presidency of Europe. Gone is the ceremonial introduction of the provisions of the treaty. His desire to expand the EU’s military capacity — in line with a 20% reduction in France’s domestic military spend — has received a a significant setback.

Sarkozy comes to Dublin tomorrow to “listen” to the Irish people explain why they voted No to the treaty just over a month ago, and how they wish to proceed. It sounded like a positive, almost conciliatory, move when he announced it at the start of his six-month presidential term.

But last Tuesday, 48 hours after his “Club Med” triumph and 24 hours after Bastille Day celebrations, Sarkozy turned the mood sour with remarks to members of his UMP party that “the Irish will have to vote again”. This raised the important question: how much of a listener is the preening president of France?

In Dublin tomorrow, Sarkozy will be greeted by a crowd on Merrion Square protesting about democratic deficits, dwindling fish quotas, disappearing archeological artefacts and new limits on vitamin supplements. Before joining the protests, fishermen from west Cork, Kerry, Galway and Donegal will give free fish to Dubliners to highlight their having to dump thousands of tonnes of over-quota catch at sea.

AMONG the protesters will be political groups such as Eirigi, a socialist republican group comprising disaffected Sinn Fein personnel, the Peace and Neutrality Alliance and People Before Profit. Patricia McKenna, the Green party’s former MEP and opponent of a succession of European treaties, will be there, as will the Hill of Tara defenders, an anti-M3 group, and health shop owners.

McKenna will join Sarkozy at the French embassy to make a three-minute contribution to the “listening” debate. “I take his ‘I want to listen’ comment with a grain of salt,” she said. “It seems from the very, very beginning they were prepared to railroad over the position of the Irish. But I wouldn’t put all of the blame on Sarkozy or [German chancellor] Angela Merkel. A huge responsibility lies at the door of Brian Cowen because he refused to go out to Brussels and say, ‘This treaty cannot now be ratified’.”

Sarkozy will be accompanied by Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister and anti-hero of the Yes campaign. If he wanders on to Merrion Square instead of meeting his counterpart, Micheal Martin, Kouchner will probably be cheered by the protesters as the man who swung the No vote for them with his extraordinarily ill-timed threatening remarks a week before the referendum on June 12 that Ireland would be “the first to suffer” if the country voted No.

Indeed, it might not be surprising if the reception inside Government Buildings on Merrion Street was no warmer than outside on Merrion Square. The taoiseach said the right things in New York last week about every EU leader’s right to an opinion on a vote that affected them. But privately, say Irish journalists covering the taoiseach’s trip, Cowen was furious about Sarkozy’s loose talk of Ireland having to hold a second referendum.

Other government sources revealed last week that officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs were dismayed by the treatment meted out to opposition leaders such as Eamon Gilmore and Enda Kenny as the French continually pared back the duration of Sarkozy’s visit to Dublin. The president wants to be back in Paris on Monday evening to attend a rare, but critical, vote on the French constitution by the joint houses of the French parliament sitting in the Elysée Palace.

Gilmore, the Labour leader, has refused the invitation to join a gathering of 16 Yes and No campaign groups that will compete for the presidential ear in the embassy tomorrow.

Fine Gael, also miffed, has decided to send a representative, but it is unlikely to be Kenny, the party leader.

Senator Shane Ross has not been invited, despite reports that he lobbied both governments for an invitation. Finian McGrath, an anti-treaty independent TD, is in, after lobbying on his behalf by the Irish government. Roger Cole of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance is out. Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president is in, but only if Mary Lou McDonald doesn’t return from holidays on time.

Amid the last-minute chaos of the invitation process, some invitees had personal phone calls from Yvon Roe D’Albert, the French ambassador. Others, such as McKenna and Declan Ganley, the founder of the anti-treaty group Libertas, received impersonal e-mails from embassy staff. A lot of people are annoyed.

Kathy Sinnott, a Munster MEP, was one of the surprise stars of the No campaign last month, yet she got no invitation. As a co-president of her political grouping in the European parliament, she lunched with Sarkozy three weeks ago in Strasbourg along with other group leaders and took an early opportunity to tell him why the Irish rejected the treaty.

“I said I could list 30 different reasons, but they all boil down to concern about democracy and the pace at which we are giving it away and handing over power to Brussels,” she said.

Sinnott found the president constantly shifting in his seat throughout lunch, and he bristled at her suggestion that he could address one pressing concern of the Irish electorate at the stroke of a pen by handing back fishing quotas unfairly taken from Ireland 35 years ago.

But Sinnott was not immune to Sarkozy’s Gallic charm and dismisses the view that he is “the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time” regarding Ireland’s post-treaty deliberations. “He is incredibly engaging and amusing, but you have to hear what he is saying because he is basically showing us a Europe of the future where the leaders lead and everybody else is sheep and they do what they are told,” she said.

So does that make him the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, for those who want to get a Yes vote through a second referendum? Gay Mitchell, Fine Gael’s Dublin MEP, more in hope than confidence, said: “I don’t think he can do much damage in four hours. If the government says there is nothing we can do about this, we want a year, then we’ll have to have the European elections on the basis of Nice [the treaty]. It is not going to be achieved by Sarkozy flapping in and out of town.”

Sarkozy told the European parliament last week that Europe needed to know whether it would go ahead under the rules of Nice or Lisbon. Again, this was interpreted as pressure for an early referendum.

A Yes vote in the spring would allow the next European elections to proceed under Lisbon rules, and return to countries such as Spain some of the European parliament seats taken under Nice. It would allow the European commission to continue with 27 members.

But Irish ministers believe further arm-twisting contributions in the same vein will make the already slim prospects of holding a Lisbon Two referendum next spring a mission akin to political suicide for the Irish government.

Cowen suffered a heavy defeat in the Lisbon treaty referendum barely a month into his leadership. He is now managing a looming recession in his second month in office. The taoiseach cannot afford to risk a second defeat on Lisbon unless he is sure of his ground.

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