The Irish Government will today indicate that it is to re-run the referendum it lost in the summer on the Lisbon treaty – provided that a raft of concessions are attached to Europe's next treaty.

Pledging to pass the treaty by the end of next year is a huge political gamble by Brian Cowen, the Taoiseach, given his government's precarious rating in opinion polls and the decisive "No" vote in June.

Mr Cowen may even avoid the "R" word today and simply pledge to try and pass the document - but it would be political suicide to attempt to do this without putting it before Irish voters again.

He has come under huge pressure from fellow EU leaders to tell their summit today that he will find a way of rescuing the treaty, which they drew up after the failure of the EU Constitution at the hands of French and Dutch voters.

The treaty aims to streamline decision-making by scrapping the national veto in many policy areas, and create a permanent EU president and foreign minister. So far 24 of the 27 nations have ratified it.

Legally-binding protocols on Ireland’s military neutrality, and on its independence on tax and family law, are the minimum guarantees needed to sway a sceptical electorate, Mr Cowen will tell fellow EU leaders at their summit in Brussels.

These sweetners would need to be added to the following EU treaty, which will be needed for Croatia to join the 27-nation club in 2010, because otherwise all the other countries would have to go back and ratify an amended version of the Lisbon treaty.

Mr Cowen will also demand that Ireland be guaranteed a European Commissioner despite the Lisbon treaty's plan to cut the number of top bureaucrats to two-thirds the number of member states.

The plan was for countries to have a member only in two out of every three commissions but Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, has said that he favours every nation keeping a representative. The Lisbon treaty allows for this to be done by unanimous agreement of all 27 nations and may not be a simple matter because some remain sceptical about the increasingly cumbersome nature of the EU's executive body.

The referendum defeat in June left the treaty in limbo. Mr Cowen is believed to have ruled out another vote before next autumn because of the rapidly deteriorating economic situation in Ireland.

Research into why Irish voters rejected the treaty showed that keeping a commissioner was a big reason, possibly because Ireland's current commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, is such a high-profile and outspoken figure who punches above his weight in Brussels in the important role of internal market commissioner.

Mr McCreevy said in an interview published last week that the Irish vote – the only referendum permitted by any EU government on the treaty – should be respected.

“We live in a democracy,” he said, adding that the No campaign succeeded against “the might of all the political parties in Ireland”.

Mr McCreevy, who also received some of the blame in the summer after he admitted that he had not read the treaty and said that people would be insane to try because it was too complicated, added: “People did take the issue very seriously. So that has to be respected.”

The referendum had a high turn-out of more than half the Irish electorate, with 53.4 per cent against the treaty and 46.6 per cent in favour. It became known as the Lisbon treaty after EU leaders signed it at a ceremony in the Portuguese capital last year, which Gordon Brown attended late after keeping an appointment with a parliamentary committee hearing in London.

Mr Cowen has been on a tour of Europe in the past fortnight to update leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, on his country’s latest thinking on a second referendum.

But the treaty is also struggling to pass the Czech parliament where President Vaclav Klaus is campaigning against the document, despite its endorsement by his party colleague Mirek Topolanek, the Prime Minister. It has also not yet been signed off by Poland's eurosceptic president, Lech Kazcynski.

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