The Taoiseach said that Department of Finance officials would brief any interested Dail deputies on his role in both the G-Tech and tax concession controversies.
Mr Ahern was replying to Opposition criticism of his failure to make a statement to the House on the matter, despite having asked Department officials to brief journalists on Tuesday.
When the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, said that the Taoiseach should have made a statement in the Dail, Mr Ahern replied: "You and I know, because both of us have been in this position, you would be in here making a lot of statements. Part of what political life is in this country today is the former President Johnson's theory in America: if you are the Taoiseach of the day, deny them . . ."
Mr Bruton remarked: "Lyndon Baines Johnson is the new role model."
The Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, said the Taoiseach had said on Tuesday that he had no access to papers in the Department of Finance regarding the controversies. It had subsequently emerged that a senior official in the personal office of the Department of the Taoiseach arranged for private briefings for selected journalists on a one-by-one basis. "I regard that as an act of contempt for this House. There is no difficulty relating to the access to the information for journalists, but clearly there is a difficulty of access to information for deputies."
Mr Ahern said that, contrary to what had appeared in some of the morning newspapers, questions tabled by Mr Quinn on Tuesday had been ruled out by the office of the Ceann Comhairle. "So I did not refuse to answer anything yesterday."
Mr Ahern said that serious allegations had been made about him in Sunday newspapers. On last Saturday morning, he had been given 13 questions by the Sunday Tribune and asked to provide replies by the afternoon.
"Through my office, I said that it was absolutely impossible, but we would make the records available as soon as we could get them." There were no records in his possession, he said, and he had asked his office to ask the Department of Finance officials, who had the records, to brief the newspapers on the issues.
"They can also brief any committee of this House. It is a pity they could not come in and brief the entire House. Unfortunately, what happens in these cases is that is that a totally erroneous, false and damaging allegation is made and hits the front page of a Sunday newspaper. When it is totally clarified, and it is shown clearly that I did no wrongdoing, it is page 19 or wherever else."