Fianna Fail is to establish a charter for its members which will set out strict rules on fund-raising and the acceptance of donations within the party. Announcing the move last night, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said that it would be "over and above the requirement of the ethics legislation".
Mr Ahern said that the fundraising charter would be in place by next January and was a response to widespread concern and confusion in politics about the issue of fund-raising.
He was addressing the opening session of a two-day party conference in Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, aimed at renewing party policies after a year in government.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, Mr Ahern commented: "If we keep going the way we're going, there'll be nobody left in the place. No one will go near politics and half the people in it will get out."
Committing Fianna Fail to a series of internal reforms aimed at bolstering party ideals in the wake of the Haughey and Burke donation scandals, Mr Ahern told the conference that the party would make moves in the coming months "to ensure the highest probity in politics and public life generally".
In what was seen as an indirect reply to comments from the Progressive Democrats about the potential of new scandals to destabilise the Government, Mr Ahern also said that the proposed Standards in Public Office Commission could deal with new political controversies "without having to resort every time to new and costly tribunals".
He warned: "Other parties should not rely on anyone getting back into government by default, on the emergence of something that either is, or can be represented as, reflecting badly on Fianna Fail as a whole." This was "an approach not adopted towards the aberrations of individuals in other parties".
The Taoiseach's comments come in the wake of last Saturday's PD conference, at which the Tanaiste and PD leader, Ms Harney, said that she could not rule out the possibility that new disclosures from the Moriarty or Flood tribunals might destabilise the coalition.
Speaking to reporters last night, Mr Ahern said that his comments were "not in any particular context, but it seems to me that the only party you can have a go at in Irish political life is Fianna Fail".
Referring to recent comments by the former PD leader, Mr Des O'Malley, that his party needed to act as a watchdog while in government with Fianna Fail, Mr Ahern said: "We don't need any watchdogs. If the laws are there, we'll apply them."
Asked if there were other financial "skeletons" in the Fianna Fail closet, he replied: "I haven't got a clue." Fianna Fail would deal with any new problems "as best we can", he said.
In a wide-ranging address to the conference, Mr Ahern also spoke of the problems posed by the "riptide of economic success, which was creating "multiple pressures on housing, transport, health, education and the environment". However, if we handled this "unprecedented situation" properly, "we are in the presence of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring Ireland rapidly into the front rank of the world's most developed countries".
Pointing to the 4.3 per cent unemployment rate and 0.9 per cent rate of inflation in the US, Mr Ahern said that the ideal for Ireland would be to retain Europe's "social consensus and solidarity of a caring society" while also emulating the "flexible can-do ethos" of the American economy.
In his keynote speech the Taoiseach said: "Being a low-tax country does not just involve lower taxes. It also involves removing the low-paid from the tax net altogether and making more real progress on this than we have done in the past. It also means recognition of family responsibilities, as we pledged in our manifesto."
About 90 Fianna Fail TDs and senators attended the opening session of the conference, which is being held in the Slieve Russell Hotel. The venue has been booked out for the event, which included a dinner addressed last night by Prof Kevin Whelan, of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, who spoke on the "Republicanism of 1798".
Earlier, speakers at a plenary session included Mr Padraig O'Connor, head of NCB Stockbrokers, who discussed the economic challenges of the current boom, and Mr Tony Fahey, of the Economic and Social Research Institute, who spoke on the social challenges.
