A new venue for the Northern talks when they reach an advanced stage was suggested by the Taoiseach. Mr Ahern said he believed that a move from Castle Buildings, in Belfast, now and again, would be helpful, adding: "I would favour, at a certain stage, moving to a neutral venue where the key participants would make an all-out attempt to reach agreement, with, of course, the support from our international friends and others."
The Democratic Left leader, Mr Proinsias De Rossa, asked if the Taoiseach was contemplating some place like Oslo, where the Middle East accord was agreed. Mr Ahern stressed that the early meetings in Dublin and London would help somewhat to deal with certain issues and that the provision of a neutral venue was more down the road, and probably at the end of what was said would be a 10-week working period.
He added that there was an amount of excellent papers produced by everybody, some better than others.
The Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, suggested that the Taoiseach reflect on his suggestion "in view of the fact that the more you move talks around the more problems you have of a logistical kind, as we see with the European Parliament and all the different places where it meets, particularly if complex papers are involved."
It was also the case, he said, that the more people moved to novel venues for meetings the more risk there was of "grandstanding", and people appearing important because they were in a new place. There was also a risk of discontinuity developing in the negotiating atmosphere necessary for compromise.
Mr Ahern said he agreed with Mr Bruton, but he also believed that some moves out of Castle Buildings to make progress would be a good idea. A neutral venue would be at the final stage of the talks, and no particular location had been mentioned.
The Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, asked Mr Ahern if he was aware of the view, which was now widespread, that the Taoiseach seemed to have given an extraordinary amount of preference to Sinn Fein-IRA to the exclusion of the SDLP and had consequently significantly damaged its electoral and political substance and presence in the North.
"I totally reject that out of hand," replied Mr Ahern, adding that he was in contact with the SDLP, in one form or another, practically every day of the week. He had contacts with Sinn Fein as well, but not nearly as many. When whatever group looked for a meeting, the Government tended to provide one. He added that he had not heard such a view expressed, but if it had been it was by somebody who was not very well informed.
Mr Bruton asked Mr Ahern to reflect on the concern expressed by Mr Quinn, particularly in the light of the arrangements for any visit by him or ministers to Northern Ireland. All of the political parties and public representatives should be adequately involved in any visits in a way that recognised their comparative importance.
Mr Ahern said that when he recently went to Northern Ireland he had allocated most of a day to the trip to Derry and the remainder to a trip to west Belfast.
"I was asked a few days in advance not to go to Derry because a certain person was missing. So I did not go. That is why it looked slightly imbalanced." He added that he could not, unfortunately, fix everybody's diary. He would be visiting Derry for a whole day in January. Asked by Mr Bruton if it had been definitively established that all of the participants were willing to engage seriously in all of the strands, he said that the reply was "yes", insofar as one could be definitively positive about something in Northern Ireland.