The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen said today he believes the DUP are striving to agree a deal, saying the current round of talks "will work, it has to work".
He was speaking ahead of the resumption of talks in Hillsborough Castle on Tuesday to be chaired by the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy.
He said over the last ten years people have learned that "we do have to work together and live together. It will work it has to work. Are people going to walk away just as we are about to bring about a transformation in politics," Mr Cowen asked.
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen
Speaking on RTE Radio's This Weekprogramme Mr Cowen said practical politics must be adopted. "The fact is that we can do a lot more together than we have been capable of doing in the past, but we need practical, sensible politics. We don't need systems overload," Mr Cowen said.
"The quid pro quoif you like for stability is also practical politics and no-one should fear it." Mr Cowen claimed steps taken during crunch talks at Leeds Castle in Kent offered the framework for a way forward, but said no surreptitious deals were in place to ensure parties stayed on board.
Unprecedented levels of IRA decommissioning were on offer at the talks but a breakthrough foundered on the DUP's insistence that the 1998 Belfast Agreement should be altered.
"We see the outline of a comprehensive agreement on all matters in a way which people would not have thought possible five or 10 years ago and that's because we have seen the work of this Agreement," Mr Cowen said.
"It's (the Agreement's) potential is far greater than what has been achieved thus far.
"People need to take the lead in their hands and go for it and I think that there is sufficient for everybody in all respects to bring about the sort of partnership politics which has not been a feature sufficiently of Northern Ireland politics in the past and that is the way forward.
"There is a serious engagement going on. People are striving very hard to find an accommodation," Mr Cowen said.
But Mr Cowen said if an accommodation was to be reached in the coming days it had to support the principles of democratic politics through partnership and equality.
He said all sides were aware of the challenge the outcome of last November Assembly elections posed - with the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein emerging as the two main parties in the north.
And he claimed what people wanted more than anything was peace and the chance to prosper.
"People want to see an end to violence, all the capability and capacity. They want to see politics being liberated from the circumstances which brought about the conflict in the past," he said.