While the release of the killers of Garda Jerry McCabe was "off the table" for now, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Ahern, has not totally ruled out discussions on the issue at some future stage, provided the republican movement took definitive steps on decommissioning and ending paramilitarism.
During an interview at the end of his week-long visit to the US, Mr Ahern was asked if the McCabe killers' release was off the table forever. "Well, I mean, it's off the table," he said.
"There's nothing, in effect, being discussed at this moment in time. Who knows when the discussions will resurrect and come to a final conclusion? Some of the McCabe killers may very well be out in the not-too-distant future, having served their required sentence. So we'll just have to wait and see what happens in that respect."
But the key issues, as far as he was concerned, were still decommissioning and an end to paramilitarism, and the need for republicans to put their verbal commitments into action.
"We're ready, willing and able to engage with anyone at any time. We are not going to throw everything out," he said. While he acknowledged that "huge progress" had been made by the republican movement on the verbal level last December, this had to be translated into deeds: "We haven't seen the action."
The Government had been "prepared to do some very unpalatable things" as part of an overall agreement.
"We indicated that we were prepared to do things that perhaps in normal circumstances we wouldn't want to do, none of us would want to do." He regretted that the discussions had "floundered" over decommissioning and paramilitarism in the end.
"We regret that. We would want to continue to engage. We don't think excluding people from the discussions would be a good thing, but we have to make our position absolutely adamant, quite clear, that they have to deal with these issues before there can be any deals struck. Because this is the kernel, the 64-dollar question. These are the issues that they have to deal with."
The Government remained "absolutely adamant" that the Provisional IRA was involved in the Northern Bank raid.
It had also been given "hard security advice" by the Garda Síochána that the Sinn Féin leadership knew about the raid in advance.
"They are two sides of the one coin, in effect." Although it was put to him by some Irish-American sources that security advice can be mistaken, as in the case of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Mr Ahern would have none of this.
"No, I don't think so. To be honest, all that sort of skirting around the issue and likening it to other things is hogwash in my view."
He also rejected any suggestion that Fianna Fáil was playing party politics. The long-standing engagement in the peace process by senior figures in his party gave the lie to this allegation, which was "totally disingenuous and totally wrong".
On the issue of the St Patrick's Day reception in the White House, he had not given any specific advice to the Bush administration on inviting Sinn Féin.
"I haven't lobbied in any way, shape or form, one way or the other, whether parties should be there at that gig or not. To be honest, it's a bit of a sideshow. The reality is that we will have to concentrate on what the core issues are."