Taoiseach rules out coalition with SF

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern yesterday rowed back publicly from the views expressed by Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern that it was only a “matter of time” before Sinn Féin would be considered as suitable coalition partners for Fianna Fáil.

Speaking at his party’s annual Wolfe Tone commemoration in Bodenstown yesterday, the Taoiseach made it clear that there was no prospect of any coalition between Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin until the IRA ceased to exist and paramilitarism was eliminated.

While downplaying the Foreign Affairs Minister’s comments, Mr Ahern repeatedly refused to be drawn on what point in the future such an arrangement would be considered.

“On another day if all of those things happened we will have a very normalised society where all the normal acts of political parties will all happen.

“Of course, there’s all kinds of inevitabilities about that. But we’re a good bit away from that,” he said.

Mr Ahern said he had not been aware that Dermot Ahern was giving last week’s interview and stressed he would have answered the question differently.

“I have been asked this question 30 times and I answered the question in a different way. And naturally enough the way I answer it is what Government policy is,” he said.

Pressed further, the Taoiseach refused to speculate on what the future political landscape may be.

“Until we get to that position we can’t speculate about it and in the 40 or 50 times I have been asked this question I will not speculate on it,” he said.

“There’s not a chance that I would say what might happen at the next election. I, at this stage, don’t know what I’ll achieve by Christmas.”

The comments last week by the Minister for Foreign Affairs were this weekend described by reliable sources as part of an agreed ‘sequencing’ that emerged from last month’s talks in Leeds Castle. It is one of a number ‘confidence-building’ measure to allay the concerns of republicans about the political consequences of total IRA disbandment.

It is the second time the Government has moved to qualify Dermot Ahern’s remarks with Education Minister Mary Hanafin and now the Taoiseach limiting their significance. While neither categorically ruled out a Coalition arrangement if obligations on disbandment and decommissioning were met, both played down the possibility of this after the General Election in 2007.

Meanwhile, SF chairman Mitchell McLaughlin told RTÉ’s The Week in Politics last night that the IRA was ready to make another historic breakthrough if unionists were willing to accept power-sharing.