The Taoiseach will meet Mr Tony Blair on Wednesday for talks on the political situation. Talks involving the Northern parties will follow, and a round-table initiative remains a possibility.
The Downing Street meeting will take place as worries grow about the implementation of the Belfast Agreement and the unionist threat to withdraw from the Executive.
Political concern has been mounting over the attack on Mr Danny McBrearty following a PSNI assessment that the Provisional IRA was responsible for the gun and hammer attack on the bus driver as he drove pensioners home from a trip to Donegal last Sunday.
Mr Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin and Mr Mark Durkan both condemned the attack yesterday, with the SDLP leader adding he believed "members of the IRA were responsible for this attack". He said that denials of IRA in- volvement were no more reliable than others that had been made.
Mr McGuinness spoke of his "deep concern", and said: "I want to make my position on this attack absolutely clear. It was wrong and should not have happened."
Speaking at the British Labour Party conference in Blackpool, Mr Blair sounded a grave note about the Derry shooting. He said he awaited a fuller security briefing before addressing questions on the IRA ceasefire. However, he warned that, as time passed, scrutiny of ceasefires would become more stringent.
There was further wrangling over policing yesterday, with Sinn Féin claiming the Policing Board was a "toothless tiger" and that a gulf existed between the current arrangements and those envisaged by Patten. The SDLP countered, claiming it was responsible for pushing the policing agenda closer to that outlined at the time of the Belfast Agreement.
A senior Sinn Féin source has told The Irish Times that an opportunity exists for worthwhile amendments to be made to policing legislation, but the party warned yesterday that what it called "key requirements" were still to be met.
The Chief Constable, Mr Hugh Orde, and the Policing Board yesterday unveiled a resourcing plan for the PSNI to cover the next eight to 10 years.
Mr Orde said the full-time reserve, comprising some 2,000 officers, would be retained until phasing out began in April 2005.
This pleased most unionists, who claimed the part-timers' contracts had been preserved, while others said Patten's recommendation to scrap the reservists had been adhered to.
The resource plan - which includes measures to tackle chronic rates of absenteeism, plans to "civilianise" desk jobs to free officers to resume street policing and a review of security deployments - was greeted by the two governments.
The Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, commended the board for reaching "consensus on a difficult issue".
A Government source said the plan was a key to realising the new beginning to policing in the North.
The plan also won qualified support from the officers' representative body, the Police Federation. In a statement it welcomed a reprieve for the reserve officers, but said it envisaged they would still be needed after April 2005 when phasing out is due to begin.