The state of the peace process is "not perfect" but there is now a clearer position than there has been all year, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has told the Dáil.
He said DUP leader Dr Ian Paisley had answered the question - "even if it was outside the Assembly rather than inside" - that his party was prepared to deal with powersharing. If they could get a resolution on the MI5 issue then Sinn Féin would have to respond, and "the sooner the better".
Mr Ahern insisted that Dr Paisley "is going to be the First Minister and Martin McGuinness is the Deputy First Minister". They were prepared to work through the Preparation for Government committee and would nominate other ministers on March 14th.
"In dealing with Northern Ireland it is always pull and tuck," he said.
He was responding to criticism by Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte, who said the two Governments' approach had been characterised by "successive slippage" and that successive deadlines had been missed by the DUP and Sinn Féin.
He said "the threshold kept being lowered and the more it was lowered the less unequivocal were the statements from two of the parties involved. And even the requirement in legislation to nominate for First Minister and Deputy First Minister was changed by the Secretary of State in the House of Commons to merely indicating, and not even that was subscribed to. So why would the parties keep deadlines?" he asked.
He also questioned Dr Paisley's comments outside the Assembly chamber about nomination for First Minister.
"Whatever statements outside the chamber, is it not the case that the only place where we can get the necessary commitments is within the chamber of the Assembly itself?"
The Taoiseach said that "I would love it to be perfect but it's not all perfect".
"There are a number of major difficulties and I suppose the biggest one is the DUP have taken the view that they won't have face-to-face talks with Sinn Féin in the first place and if that happened it would resolve a lot very quickly.
"But that's not going to happen in the circumstances we wanted. But the next part is we move to the Programme for Government Committee which is useful, not perfect."
"I think we have a clearer position than we've had all year when we couldn't get them to meet in any format and we didn't know if we could get them to deal with the two issues policing and powersharing."
He added: "I accept that he has addressed that issue and he has done so yesterday again in the RTÉ interview and his party colleagues have made it clear to the prime minister and the secretary of state Hain and to others as well. So I think that issue is clear."
