The Government has asked the British authorities to allow it to place Irish personnel at British ports to carry out disinfectant procedures there to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.
The Taoiseach, speaking on RTE Radio's This Week, said the Government was looking at a situation where the only way the ports could apply the necessary protection was "to do it ourselves".
"We are in discussion with them about Irish contractors with the same equipment that we have now used in Dublin port, of putting our people into the British ports to do the job, because we have failed, even though this has gone on since the 21st of February to get them to do it," he said.
"We almost have the agreement of the British and tomorrow will decide that. In the absence of them spraying, we will do it ourselves and pay for it ourselves."
Mr Ahern said that in Northern Ireland there was far more success than before in persuading the authorities to put in place more stringent controls.
"But we had big difficulty in doing that. My main source of argument with Tony Blair was about the British ports and we still have that difficulty."
Mr Ahern said there was a serious ongoing Garda investigation into smuggling and illegal movements of cattle and already the first arrests had taken place. He said the people involved were in criminal activity and they had done great damage. We were lucky, he said, we only had two cases on the island of Ireland.
"Those cases were from the same batch of sheep which came from Carlisle which obviously involved smuggling in as much as we have details. These investigations will have to continue.
"I do believe that the kind of tolerance we have had to people who have been engaged in smuggling, not only of animals, but of fuel and other issues over the years, we have to change.
"They seem to think they have a God-given right to proceed in this kind of way and of course, they are bullyboys as well as criminals who seem to be able to use force and terrorise people who are afraid to speak about them," he said.
Mr Ahern said there were also links to paramilitary groups and that had been the case through the years.
"While there is not substantive evidence of that, there is plenty of hearsay evidence and I think we know why it is hearsay rather than substantive," he said.
"So I think we have to take far tougher action on this on the other side of foot-and-mouth because it affects many other aspects of our economy as well as animal health."
He said it was both good management and a bit of luck that had kept the number of cases down here. If the disease had been airborne, it could not have been managed.
"We have no new case since 22nd March but we have to keep up all the current arrangements. The 19th of this month is a very important day because that will take us a month over it."
He said there would be a 10day period after that and it would be the end of the month before controls could be relaxed a little. "But the Border controls, the movement of cattle and all of the other issues, disinfectant, not only at the ports, is going to have to continue for the summer," he said.
It was going to be a difficult summer for the tourism industry, he said, especially in the US market where there was a great deal of confusion between BSE and foot-and-mouth.