There was an "unprecedented opportunity to develop European-style left versus right politics in this country", the Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn claimed.

"That is the purpose behind the discussions about to take place between my party and the Democratic Left," he said during a debate on the bicentenary of the 1798 Rebellion. "Together we are the true inheritors of 1798 republicanism."

The Labour leader had sharp words for the republican movement and Fianna Fail in the debate. Civil Rights campaigners in the North in the 1960s, and parties like the SDLP who preached tolerance and non-sectarianism "have more in common with the men and women of 1798 than those who bear the contemporary republican mantle", he said.

Mr Quinn said 1798 had been distorted by historians and mythologised into a "green nationalist and Catholic uprising".

"That is why the greenest and most confessional party in this State has been able to call itself the republican party since its foundation without anyone batting an eyelid. It is why the current self-styled republican movement, sectarian and nationalist as it is, is readily accepted as representative of republicanism."

Everybody now knew that the rising was "more complex and profound" that that. Ten years ago the cross-party consensus on the North set out in the Belfast Agreement would have been inconceivable, he said. Ironically, this was because the party that had done most to claim credit for the events of the last few years would not have accepted it. "It is they who have joined the rest of us, not the other way around."

Earlier, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said some of the spirit of the United Irishmen "has entered into the making and implementation of the Good Friday Agreement".

"By an extraordinary conjunction of circumstances, part of the background to the bicentenary this year has been the negotiation and achievement of the first ever comprehensive peace settlement on this island, which has the support of most of the parties and a large majority of the people, North and South.

"The United Irishmen have been much in our remembrance this year, as we seek to construct an Irish politics, North and South, free of illusion but not of generosity. I feel that the best possible commemoration of them would be the consolidation of a stable, inclusive settlement in the North."

Mr Proinsias De Rossa (DL, Dublin North-West) said the most appropriate commemoration of 1798 would be to ensure that religious sectarianism was overcome in Irish life. "It should be acknowledged that sectarianism is not confined to Northern Ireland; its ugly traces are to be found in the Republic also," he said.