The SDLP leader, Mr Mark Durkan, has said he has a "level of sympathy" with the view that people in the Republic would be asked to accept something already accepted in the North if the killers of Det Garda Jerry McCabe were to be freed.
Mr Durkan was speaking in Dublin where he outlined the SDLP's proposals to break the political deadlock in the North by appointing "administrators" in the place of a power-sharing executive.
Such a proposal had the potential to move Northern Ireland politics out of a rut as direct rule became more and more embedded, he said. He added that the "context" in which those convicted for the killing of Det Garda McCabe might be released was unclear because of differences in the accounts offered by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams.
Mr Durkan said the conditions for the release of the killers of Det Garda McCabe should be laid out in public during negotiations.
The Government had consistently told him in the discussions last year that nothing other than the issues then out in the open were on the table, he added.
He insisted that the SDLP proposal had the potential to work because it centred on the structures laid out in the Belfast Agreement.
The plan calls on the Irish and British governments to nominate 10 professional administrators to run the departments now operating under direct rule from London. The plan also allows for resumption of sittings of the Northern Ireland Assembly and of the North-South Ministerial Council.
The panel of administrators would have to be approved by a cross-community vote of the Assembly and the system would remain in place until MLA ministers were appointed. He said the proposal did not involve a departure from the Belfast Agreement.
