The Government has been forced to take unprecedented precautions with the smoking ban because the hospitality lobby has so much money for litigation, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, has claimed.
Mr Ahern said the work done on the regulations by the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, earlier this year "in normal cases would have been enough" to protect them from legal challenges.
However, Mr Ahern said the resources of those opposed to the smoking ban were such that the Government had been forced to revisit the detail "in a way I cannot recall in the past 20 years".
The Government's "intelligence", he said, suggested that "any amount of money" would be made available for litigation, the effect of which would be "to cause damage to our health".
He admitted the process was "cumbersome", but the Government had to be very careful legally when "so many eminent people are prepared to take so much eminent money" to challenge the ban
The Department of Health and Children continued last night to work on the regulations necessary to implement the mid-February 2004 ban, before they are sent to the European Commission in Brussels.
The Minister for the Health is not scheduled to bring the regulations before today's Cabinet meeting, though it is likely that he will brief colleagues if they are ready in time.
The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is still in discussions with the Attorney General, Mr Rory Brady, over parallel regulations necessary to impose the smoking ban in other workplaces. The Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Mr Frank Fahey, was told by the Cabinet last week to recheck the regulations in the light of threats to take legal action.
Meanwhile, one of the leading lobby groups against the ban, the Irish Hospitality Industry Alliance (IHIA) has rejected the Taoiseach's charge that it is well-funded.
"I am not quite sure where the Government is getting its details from. We are just a grassroots organisation and we are totally self-funded," said the IHIA chairman, Mr Finbar Murphy.
The organisation, he said, is registered with the Standards in Public Office Commission, and is by law required to reveal all donations over €127, and to refuse any donation worth more than €6,762.
"The majority of our donations would be below the €127 disclosure limit and most of those that are left are below €200," said Mr Murphy, who runs a 10-bedroom hotel in Ballincollig, Co Cork.
Meanwhile, the Office of Tobacco Control rejected an allegation by the IHIA that it has "suppressed" an investigation it commissioned over the summer into the potential economic impact of the smoking ban in Ireland.
Mr Murphy claimed the two economists hired to carry out the report, Mr Moore McDowell and Mr Joe Durkan, had submitted their work three weeks ago.
However, the Office of Tobacco Control said the two economists had only been requested to study assessments already published in other countries where smoking curbs have been introduced.
"They have given us preliminary details. But that is as far as it has got. But this is a review of the international literature that is already available.
"It is not an economic impact study, or first-hand research, into the Irish situation," said the OTC spokeswoman, Ms Valerie Robinson.