Ahern faces Dail queries as FG says he misled the House

The Taoiseach faces further questioning in the Dail this week over what Fine Gael claims was misleading information in his Dail statement last Wednesday about the Gilmartin affair.

But Mr Ahern himself led a counter-attack yesterday. He dismissed suggestions he misled the Dail on the subject of a meeting between a Dublin city councillor and the developer Mr Tom Gilmartin, and rejected Sunday newspaper suggestions that media questioning forced him to correct his account to the Tanaiste before her weekend departure to Japan.

Speaking at the RDS in Dublin yesterday, Mr Ahern told journalists: "What I said in the Dail is the only information I have. Any other information I have is only from journalists. I told Mary Harney what the journalists said. It's not a question of anyone getting anything wrong. This [the request to Cllr Joe Burke to meet Gilmartin] was one event in my diary out of thousands of events in 1987 and '88."

Meanwhile the Government chief whip, Mr Seamus Brennan, told RTE Radio's This Week programme the outstanding issues should be dealt with by the tribunals, saying it was "not fair to the Taoiseach or anybody else to have this drip-feed about the details".

There had been much quibbling about "dates and time, who said what and where", but as far as the substantive issues were concerned "there are no changes there".

But the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, said he would be calling for another statement from Mr Ahern this week to explain "how he came to mislead the Dail" on matters including the Burke/Gilmartin meeting.

He cited contradictions between what Government sources and Mr Burke told Sunday newspapers. The Sunday Independent quoted sources saying they accepted Cllr Burke had met Mr Gilmartin about Quarryvale, while the Sunday Business Post quoted Cllr Burke saying the meeting was about the Bachelor's Walk development.

Mr Bruton said: "Are we to believe Mr Burke or `sources close to Mr Ahern'? Or is it that Mr Burke cannot keep up with Mr Ahern's story?"

While Opposition parties continued to predict an early general election - Fine Gael's Mr Michael Noonan said there could be a general election in April or June - Labour's deputy leader, Mr Brendan Howlin, side-stepped a question about whether the Opposition would table a no confidence motion, saying this was really an issue for the Progressive Democrats.

Meanwhile, the first real evidence of slippage in Government support because of the controversies came in a weekend opinion poll which showed a sharp fall in Fianna Fail's rating and scepticism about the Taoiseach's account to the Dail.

The Sunday Independent/IMS poll, taken on Thursday, showed Fianna Fail at 49 per cent, down 7 points on a similar survey in December. Support for the PDs remained unchanged at 3 per cent, while there were minor gains for the Dail Opposition parties: Fine Gael up two points to 23 per cent and Labour up two to 13.

Fianna Fail will take some comfort in the fact that its loss has leaked mainly into the "don't know" category, which was excluded from the figures quoted above, but rose from 14 to 18 per cent. And while the Taoiseach's personal popularity rating fell 12 points to 66 per cent, he is still running comfortably higher than any of the Opposition leaders. Mr Bruton's rating fell three points to 47 per cent, while Mr Ruairi Quinn's climbed three to 55.