The Taoiseach warned the participants in the Northern peace process not to "talk up a crisis".

Mr Ahern said: "It is an easy enough thing to do to talk up a crisis. Contacts between the parties and the two governments are continuing. That is to be welcomed and encouraged."

The Taoiseach was replying to Mr Caoimhghin O Caolain (SF, Cavan-Monaghan) who asked if Mr Ahern shared the grave concern of many about what was now a crisis in the peace process.

"Does he accept that the various elements of the Good Friday agreement are being addressed, including the issue of decommissioning, which remains unresolved, just as the issue of the RUC remains unresolved, just as the courts and judiciary in the six counties are unreformed, just as demilitarisation has yet to happen, just as the equality agenda has yet to be implemented? None of these yet unresolved issues, including the issue of decommissioning, must be singled out and used by anyone to exercise a veto over the entire agreement."

Mr Ahern said the issues referred to were being worked on in one form or another.

Pressed further by Mr O Caolain, Mr Ahern said there were "no preconditions in the Good Friday agreement. Political logic dictates that we move on everything we can and try to overcome the impasse."

Mr Ahern said the first he had heard of the postponement of the creation of the Northern Ireland executive was on Monday, when a Sinn Fein staff member accompanying Mr Gerry Adams to Government Buildings told him about it.

He said the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, had called for the setting up of the executive to be moved along.

"And I think that was the call she made in consultation with the Prime Minister, as I understand it. It was a realisation that tomorrow was not going to be reached, and she, therefore, set what she believed was a realistic date. I was not party to that change of date, but I have no great difficulty with it."

Asked by the Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, about his meeting with Mr Adams, the Taoiseach said Sinn Fein's response was that it was doing all it could under the agreement in working to try to find a resolution to decommissioning with Gen de Chastelain. Mr Quinn said Mr Adams had said at meetings with Labour and elsewhere that the IRA would never decommission. Mr Ahern said he believed the statement in the Belfast Agreement, that decommissioning of arms was a central part of it, must stand. He thought Mr Adams, Mr Martin McGuinness and others in Sinn Fein were doing all they could to achieve it.

"It is not, I think, acceptable to anybody, or those who are in touch with me, that this is an impossible thing we are trying to achieve."

Asked by the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, what he thought might happen when many of the participants in the peace process would be in the United States, the Taoiseach said he hoped this time could be used to continue close dialogue. He said people now needed to talk through where they were at and what was there to be achieved and lost.

If the fundamental move could be made, they would move, "straight, literally in one day" to the executive, the North-South ministerial council, the British-Irish council and the British-Irish inter-governmental conference. "The parties themselves have to reflect on that. They have to see that is the prize: a real assembly working, a real executive working."

Mr Bruton said he would endorse what the Taoiseach had said about the need for the participants to look at the big picture, and at what could be lost if an agreement was not reached on the one issue currently remaining unsettled.

"All in this House are anxious to see this matter resolved quickly and in a statesmanlike fashion by all concerned," he said.