ON THE OPPOSITION:"Nobody's smokescreening. Perhaps if you stopped waffling, if you stopped waffling we might get some work done. You're a waffler, you've been years around here waffling." - To Gay Mitchell at a Dáil committee, December 1994.
"People had had enough of them after two years. Imagine if they were around again for five years. Sure we'd be back in the Third World in jig time."
- On the idea of a Fine Gael/ Labour coalition, September 2005.
"The most hopeless policy that I ever heard pursued by any nitwit.You're a failed person, you were rejected and your political philosophy was rejected."
- To Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins during a debate on housing, June 2006.
"Are you deaf as well as stupid?"
- To Eamon Gilmore who asked when Mr Ahern would return to the tribunal, December 2007.
ON THE NORTH
"This is a day we should treasure - a day when agreement and accommodation have replaced days of difference and division."
Good Friday, April 10th, 1998
"Yeah. People say 'does that mean physical, does that mean Semtex, does that mean guns?' It means that the principle has to be accepted and that then whatever modalities are worked by de Chastelain, because that is his expertise to work out how it actually happens, and that is what we mean."
- Clarifying his position on decommissioning, February 1999.
"Building a lasting and just peace on this island is my great political goal, the priority that I will continue to put above all else."
- June 2002
"The success we have seen - in reimagining British-Irish relations and in establishing peace in Northern Ireland - is not the end, but only the beginning of what we can achieve together".
- Addressing the Westminster parliament, May 2007.
ON HIS FINANCES
"I'm not answering what I got for my Holy Communion money, my Confirmation money, what I got for my birthday, what I got for anything else, I'm not into that. I gave all the details of everything to do with my life to the tribunal but I'm not under investigation for any of these things, including the unjust and unfair leak that's in the papers this morning."
- September 2006
"I was beholden to none of them and they were not beholden to me."
- On a £22,500 "dig-out" from friends in 1993, speaking to RTÉ in September 2006.
"But the fact is that I do not get the same confidentiality, the same fair hearing and the same circumstances in a tribunal as anyone else. So it is not an equal playing pitch."
- January 2008
"For a number of years I have engaged in private correspondence with the Mahon tribunal, during the course of which I have handed over a large volume of material covering details of my personal finances over 20 years. The selective leaking of some of this information has given rise to the current controversy."
- May 2007
"It is unbelievable and I really, really don't believe . . . that you or anybody else would put that together, other than trying to set me up and stitch me up. That is just unbelievable. Unbelievable!" responding to questioning from tribunal counsel Des O'Neill in relation to the source of payments totalling £22,500.
- December 2007
ON THE ECONOMY
"In actual fact the reason it's on the rise is because probably the boom times are getting even more boomer."
- In relation to the rise in inflation, July 2006.
ON EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION
"I was sat closer to him than you are now and I looked at the great President Bush and said to him I wanted 'to be sure to be sure', and he assured me."
- In relation to assurances that CIA rendition flights have not passed through Ireland, December 2006.
ON HIS DEPARTURE
"[ I] will definitely be there until 2011 or 2012."
- November 2007
"I have said from a good while back that if I have the continued support of my colleagues, I will remain as Taoiseach."
- December 2007
ON RAY BURKE
"I've been just about up every tree in north Co Dublin chasing all kinds of things."
- September 1997
"The persistent hounding of an honourable man to resign his important position, on the basis of innuendo and unproven allegations."
- October 1997
"Deputy Ray Burke's political career was ended by Deputy [ John] Bruton and his likes, not by me. I hope he is proud of his handiwork and that he never comes to a similar untimely political end."
- October 1997
ON CHARLES HAUGHEY
"There are certainly issues which, unfortunately, as we view them, tarnish much of the good work that we have all been involved in - both myself and people who serve with me now and people who served with me in the years gone by."
- July 1997
BERTIEISMS
"I don't think it helps people to start throwing white elephants and red herrings at each other."
"Charles J Haughey wanted to transform Temple Bar into Ireland's West Bank."
"We haven't been able to do all that we can."
... "Let's put the dirty linen - the clean linen - on the table."
"We shouldn't upset the apple tart."
"All that we're trying to do is clean up the past."
... "A handful of poor people from Drumcondra are belingered because they have known me for 40 years."