The Taoiseach has urged the GAA to remove its ban on members of the RUC some time in the future. Mr Ahern said: "I would certainly welcome it in the future . . . I do think, in the passage of time, that it is a move the GAA should make."

He was replying to the leader of Democratic Left, Mr Proinsias De Rossa, who noted that the British government had excluded the GAA from the remit of the parades commission in the North. Given the Taoiseach's close association with the GAA, he asked if Mr Ahern would request the GAA to drop Rule 21, excluding RUC officers from membership, as a quid pro quo. Removal of the ban would be a major confidence-building measure, Mr De Rossa said.

Mr Ahern said that the matter had come up at a GAA annual congress and it was indicated that it would be debated again. "What decision they will make is a matter for the GAA congress," he said. He added that as the situation improved, and they moved away from the difficulties of the past, it would be far easier to remove it. On his meeting with the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, in the margins of the Council of Europe summit meeting in Strasbourg last Friday, the Taoiseach said he had also raised a number of issues, including the proposed legislation on parades.

The legislation had since been published, and he had welcomed it in broad principle, he said.

Mr Ahern said that he had also raised the issue of Bloody Sunday at his meeting with Mr Blair, and he was satisfied that a response to the Government's assessment of the new material forwarded to the British government would be forthcoming in the near future.