The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern has dismissed controversial comments about the Republic by Ulster Unionist Party leader, Mr David Trimble as "a single transferable speech that he delivers twice a year".
In remarks reported earlier this week during a trip to the United States, the former Northern Ireland First Minister Mr Trimble said of the Republic: "If you took away Catholicism and anti-Britishness, the state does not have a reason to exist."
A spokesman for Mr Trimble later said he had been quoted out of context after meeting executives from the Chicago Sun Times- but Mr Trimble was criticised by politicians on both sides of the border for his views.
In his first reaction to the Trimble outburst, Mr Ahern today told the Dail: "I have not spoken to him yet, though I expect I will get that privilege in due course.
"But that is a fairly single transferable speech that he tends to make at least twice a year and regularly when he is out of this island.
"He has not changed this version much from the last version that I and others strongly gave our views about.
"Quite frankly, my own view is that I don't think be believes a word of it. Unfortunately, my control over him, to stop him saying it from time to time, is zero. When he is questioned on it, it is not his view, or, if it is, he does not defend any of those points."
Mr Ahern said that, like other members of the Dail, he wished that Mr Trimble would not express the views he did in the United States.
"I have asked him that before, and I will say it to him again. Needless to add, none of the points that he made - whatever about the dim and distant past - stand up to any kind of scrutiny nowadays. And it is not helpful."
Mr Ahern said that the views of some Irish nationalists in America "acted as a wind-up" for Mr Trimble. And he declared "I don't, quite frankly, get too upset".
PA