The Taoiseach has no plans to intervene in the farmers' protest despite Fine Gael calls for him to do so.
A Government spokeswoman said yesterday that the Minister for Agriculture was in contact with the farming organisations over their tractor protest, which threatens major traffic disruption in various parts of the State during the week and in Dublin on Friday.
The Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, yesterday called on Mr Ahern to seek to begin a "constructive dialogue with farmers" in order to prevent the disruption threatened by the convergence of over 1,000 tractors on the capital.
However, the Government spokeswoman said that the matter was being dealt with by the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, who had asked farmers to call off the protest. The farmers, who are protesting about falling farm incomes, should raise their grievances through the partnership process, Mr Walsh has said.
Mr Kenny said that the farming organisations had "lost faith" in the Minister for Agriculture. He added: "Like the Government parties generally, he has gone from hero to zero in a few short months. I want the Taoiseach himself to step in and offer constructive dialogue with the farming bodies. Bandying insults and statistics around the airwaves is not going to address farming concerns or prevent major traffic disruption."
Mr Kenny said that the protest was another example of a section of the electorate feeling "betrayed by a cynical Government which bought last year's election".
The president of the the Irish Farmers' Association, Mr John Dillon, yesterday demanded that Mr Walsh withdraw "misleading statements" about farm income and said that he would not meet him until he had done so.
The war of words between the IFA and the Department deepened as 1,500 tractors came out on the roads yesterday, disrupting traffic in Cork and Limerick cities as the drive on Dublin continued.
Mr Walsh has been claiming that the farmers, who were yesterday on their second day of a motorised protest from all parts of the State to Dublin, have an average gross income of €45,000.
"Until he recognises that the average family farm income in 2002 was no more than €15,000, it is difficult to see how any progress can be made in any kind of talks," an angry Mr Dillon said in Cork yesterday.
"The Minister and his Department have been engaged in a campaign of misinforation and misrepresentation of the facts contained in the Teagasc National Farm Survey. The Minister has deliberately introduced a new term, 'gross income', which has never been used by Teagasc or any other agricultural economists. This is an unknown term invented by the Minister as propaganda in which the Minister is totally denying the enormous input costs which farmers have to incur to produce their farm sales."
Mr Dillon continued: "If the farmers out on those tractors were earning €45,000 on average, there would be no protest at all. You could not get them out if they were earning that kind of money.
"Mr Walsh's first step, if he wants to show commitment to farmers, must be to publicly correct the misinformation issued over the past few days and call off the misinformation campaign by his advisers."
A spokesman for Mr Walsh denied last night that the Minister was involved in any misinformation or propaganda exercise or was misrepresenting any of the facts on farm income.
If the IFA wanted to make a serious comparison with the average industrial wage, it would have to accept the Teagasc figures, which showed that the average farm income for a full-time farmer was €31,000, while the average industrial wage was only €26,000, the spokesman said.
"It also has to be pointed out that the tax take from that income is just over €1,000 for the farmer and around €7,000 for the average industrial worker on PAYE," he added.