The Taoiseach should meet directly with nurses to show them he wants to find a solution to the current dispute, the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, has said.
Mr Bruton said the issue should be dealt with "across the table, with the Minister and even the Taoiseach talking to the nurses, showing that they care, showing that they want to find a solution".
In a sharp statement to the Dail this week, Mr Ahern warned that the Labour Court award rejected by nurses' unions remained the Government's "bottom line".
Mr Bruton said yesterday that instead of dealing with the dispute through the Health Service Employers' Agency, "which is really a glorified offshoot of the Civil Service", Mr Ahern should hold talks with the nurses.
He said while it may not be possible to find a solution, agreement could possibly be reached if the Minister for Health were to allow a "cooling-off period, because there is an enormous amount of emotion in this dispute". Nurses were "very very angry," Mr Bruton told RTE Radio One's News at One. "They have been the stress-bearers of a run-down health service. Nurses feel that they are the ones who are taking the most pressure in a health service where there is a waiting list of 34,000, where you have awful things in casualty departments in the weekends.
"We don't have a service in which nurses are getting job satisfaction."
Mr Bruton said the strike of the State's 27,000 nurses, due to begin next Monday, was "already a disaster".
He said: "I know that chemotherapy, which is essential for people recovering from cancer, is being cancelled already, before the strike has even started, because the nurses won't be available. That will inevitably mean that people will die.
"It's not a question of may die. The truth of the matter is people die slowly and people die quickly and what we're saying effectively is that people who are at risk of dying quickly may be treated but people who are dying slowly will not be treated because they're not emergencies." Mr Bruton said he did not agree that "moral responsibilities" were discharged because emergency cover is planned during the dispute.