The Cabinet meets this morning to discuss how to handle continuing damaging allegations, after the Taoiseach yesterday sharply rejected criticism of his strategy from within his own Government.
Mr Ahern dismissed yesterday's criticism from the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, that he was giving too many media interviews. Speaking in Paris where he was holding key discussions on future EU financing, Mr Ahern rejected the suggestion that he had added to the Government's difficulties through making himself too readily available to journalists for interview.
"I gave no interview on section 19 of the 1994 tax bill. I gave no interview on the Lotto. I gave no interview on a whole lot of issues . . ," Mr Ahern said.
At this morning's Cabinet meeting ministers will discuss how to deal with the continuing fallout of allegations arising from the work of the tribunals, including a number of allegations relating to Mr Ahern himself.
According to Mr McCreevy, the Taoiseach will answer questions that were raised at the weekend about the awarding to An Post of the contract to run the National Lottery for an additional four years. In 1992 the original licence was revoked and An Post was awarded a new licence to run the Lottery from 1994 to 2000.
From what he could ascertain, there was "nothing untoward" in the allocation of a new five-year contract to GTech to supply technology and hardware to the National Lottery, Mr McCreevy said.
It emerged last week in the Moriarty Tribunal that Mr Guy Snowden, the former chairman of GTech had invested $100,000 in Celtic Helicopters in 1993, the same year as the new contract was allocated to the company.
The Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, has given notice that he intends to raise an urgent Private Notice question, asking the Taoiseach to state his "true position" on decommissioning and the Northern Assembly executive. The Opposition criticised Mr Ahern for making confusing statements at a time when extreme sensitivity was required in the peace process.
Meanwhile, as Ministers are expected to consider how to deal with the flow of allegations and subsequent queries that are putting the Taoiseach and his Government constantly on the defensive, Mr Ahern insisted in Paris that the Government was stable and he denied he was drawing the Government into controversy. The Tanaiste and Progressive Democrats leader, Ms Harney, will be expected by her Fianna Fail colleagues to show unity of purpose as the Government attempts to launch its fight-back and recover lost confidence. The uncertainties over Northern policy arose from an interview with the Sunday Times in which Mr Ahern said the executive could not proceed without the prior start of IRA decommissioning, a statement that pleased unionists but, initially caused disquiet among republicans.
Yesterday Mr Ahern excluded the possibility of the Northern Ireland executive being formed without Sinn Fein, but would not rule out some slippage of the March 10th deadline for the devolution of powers from the Dail and Westminster to the executive. "It is my belief that we will not be able to set up the executive before we deal with the issue of decommissioning," he told journalists at the Irish Embassy.
The root of the misunderstanding, Mr Ahern repeated, was the headline in the British Sunday Times saying that Sinn Fein would be "barred" from the Northern executive. The journalist who interviewed him had behaved honourably by admitting that the Taoiseach never used the word "barred". "I have no dispute with the rest of the interview," Mr Ahern said. "I didn't put a foot wrong."
Republican sources last night said that in spite of the Taoiseach's remarks there would be no decommissioning of IRA weapons. His comments had not caused undue alarm in republican circles and the position had not changed - there would be no handing over of weapons.
Speaking to reporters at government buildings yesterday morning, Mr McCreevy advised the Taoiseach, that he "wouldn't be in half the difficulty" if he took "a reasonable, rational approach" to the media and decided not to be half as helpful to journalists. During his time in the Dail, no political leader had been as open as Mr Ahern, he said.