The Minister for Justice is to report to the Dail on the 1970 Arms Trial in two weeks, the House was told.
The Taoiseach said Mr O'Donoghue hoped to have an investigation initiated by his Department completed next week. Most of the Minister's work, said Mr Ahern, involved collecting facts from all of the sources, officials and departments.
Mr Ahern agreed with the Fine Gael leader, Mr Michael Noonan, that Mr O'Donoghue's report was unlikely to resolve all the questions involved.
"That would be difficult with such conflicting views and evidence. The main issue is to try to establish all that is available." The Taoiseach said his view was that whatever was found should be put in the public domain. The Government would then consider what was best.
"A number of people familiar with archives and historical facts who have raised this issue with me have divergent views, but most would feel that our bringing in a historian to try and put it all together would be wrong.
"Many believe that the only way to put together and present the facts is to bring in an archivist. A historian or researcher would have opinions and, at 30 years removed from the facts, that would not be the way to deal with the issue."
Mr Ahern said his primary duty, in the spirit of the National Archives rules and the spirit of what it was all about, was to put the facts into the public domain.
Asked by the Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, if files relating to the period were destroyed either by former Taoiseach Jack Lynch or by any successor, Mr Ahern said there was no evidence that this had happened.
Mr Noonan and Mr Joe Higgins (Socialist Party, Dublin West) raised the murder of Garda Richard Fallon in 1970 and the rumours that there had been political interference from a high level with the subsequent investigation.
Mr Ahern said he would take into account what the deputies had said but the Garda Fallon file, in so far as it concerned the Department of Justice, was probably more a Garda file and a Garda record. Pressed further by Mr Higgins, he said he would raise the matter with Mr O'Donoghue
Mr Caoimhghin O Caolain (SF, Cavan-Monaghan) said there was need for a Dail debate on the Arms Trial.
"Does the Taoiseach recognise the quite legitimate point of view, held by a significant section of Northern nationalists, and many others then and since, that the real problem was not the actions of the Lynch government, or a section of it, but the lack of action and the failure to defend the communities then at risk by moving the crisis on to the international stage, a critical objective which might have prevented much greater conflict which followed?"
Mr Ahern said he would resist the temptation to give his version of history, adding that it would not help the debate.
"I have a not altogether clear recollection but, from my reading of the details, I would have thought there would have been enormous support in those days among Northern nationalists for the actions taken by the Lynch government in going to the United Nations, in putting pressure on the British administration."