The Government and the Opposition remain divided over whether the resignation from the Dáil of the jailed Dublin West TD, Mr Liam Lawlor, should be demanded tomorrow.
The Government Chief Whip, Mr Séamus Brennan, proposes that TDs should largely repeat a year-old call on Mr Lawlor to co-operate with the Flood tribunal "or else voluntarily resign".
However, Fine Gael and Labour insist that the motion should be stronger and demand explicitly that Lawlor, who began a one-month sentence in Mountjoy yesterday, quit immediately.
A meeting between Mr Brennan and the party whips failed to reach agreement last night, and it is understood Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats are divided on the issue.
In a letter to party whips yesterday, the disgraced TD complained strongly that the one-hour debate planned for tomorrow morning lacked "fairness and balance".
Insisting that he had tried to co-operate with the Flood tribunal, Mr Lawlor said he took grave exception to a debate being held in his absence where TDs appeared ready to act "as judge, jury and executioner".
Insisting that he had tried to co-operate with the tribunal, he detailed his attempts to comply with its discovery orders over the last 13 months.
In the Dáil, the leader of Fine Gael, Mr Michael Noonan, said there were suggestions that a Dáil debate without Mr Lawlor present could be legally questionable.
He urged the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, "to have Mr Lawlor here for the debate and return him to Mountjoy.
"Otherwise the intention of this House will be totally frustrated."
However, the Labour Party was openly dismissive of Mr Noonan's call for Mr Lawlor's temporary release. "Nonsense, and it was intended to be nonsense. It isn't a viable legal proposition," said the party's chief whip, Mr Emmet Stagg.
Lawyers had advised the Labour Party, he said, that it was perfectly legal for TDs to call for the resignation of another colleague.
"Our legal advice is that the Dáil is sovereign," he declared.
Following the 6 p.m. meeting with Mr Brennan, Mr Stagg caused a dispute with Fine Gael after he claimed the party had not agreed with his draft motion calling for Mr Lawlor's resignation. Surprised by Mr Stagg's comments, a Fine Gael spokesman said the Taoiseach had earlier promised the Dáil that the Government motion would do this.
"They resiled from that. We went to the meeting with the expectation that the Government motion would concur with the request," said a spokesman.
During the Order of Business, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said that the TD for Dublin West was paying the price for not co-operating with the tribunal.
"The Government position on this issue is, as it has been for the past year and longer, that the Flood tribunal was established by the unanimous will of the members of this House and that every citizen and every member of the Oireachtas has a legal, moral and democratic duty to co-operate with the tribunal, not to obstruct it and to comply with its lawful orders," Mr Ahern said.
"That is the legal position, and I would expect any citizen or member who disputed the validity or legality of the tribunal to make his or her case to the tribunal and, if necessary, to the court," he said.
