Sinn Fein believes the IRA will decommission its arms, the Taoiseach said. Mr Ahern was replying to the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, who asked if the party had told the Taoiseach that the IRA would decommission its arms within the two-year period set out in the Belfast Agreement.

Mr Ahern replied: "I think there is no doubt about that. Sinn Fein signed the agreement on the basis that all those who have arms will decommission within the period of two years and that those political groupings who have paramilitary groupings associated with them would do all they could to make sure that they remove the arms from the streets and wherever else they are."

He added that he had always interpreted the Sinn Fein policy as meaning that there would be "decommissioning in real terms".

Pressed further by Mr Bruton, the Taoiseach said Sinn Fein would say it did not control the IRA. "But it is their belief that certainly everybody associated with them will decommission. That is what they believe. That is what Sinn Fein has always believed. There is no doubt about that."

Mr Bruton asked the Taoiseach to endorse the suggestion made by Mr John Hume that the IRA, on its own accord, would put out of commission some of its aggressive weaponry, such as Semtex.

Mr Ahern said he had had a number of meetings with Mr Hume over the summer and had agreed with him on the need to try to make progress on the issue.

"I particularly agreed with him that if the IRA was to make absolutely clear its position regarding the aspects of decommissioning in the first instance, it would give a lot of trust and confidence to the dilemma we are working around."

He said it would help even more if the IRA would bring forward a timetable on the abandoning of weapons. There were difficulties on all sides and he had listened to them at length.

Unionists were not totally convinced because they had not seen any of the arms to be disposed of over the two-year period. On the other side, Sinn Fein believed that decommissioning was not a precondition and that it should not have to put further pressure on the IRA at this stage.

He said Sinn Fein had already stated that it would do all it could to make sure that decommissioning happened.

"My belief is that both sides have to move to the centre. There is legitimacy in the core concerns of both sides but it would be extremely helpful in moving things apace and not creating obstacles if people moved sooner rather than later."

Mr Caoimhghin O Caolain (SF, Cavan-Monaghan) said the implementation of the Belfast Agreement was now far behind schedule. The agreement, he added, dealt comprehensively with decommissioning, and Sinn Fein had fulfilled its obligations to the letter. There could not now be any rewriting of the agreement.

Mr Ahern said the Irish and British governments were firmly of the view that the agreement must be implemented in all its aspects and recognised the tight time frame.

It was correct to say that decommissioning was not a precondition to setting up the executive "but equally I have to try to deal with the situation where others would say, mainly the UUP, if they could be absolutely sure that there were no difficulties on decommissioning down the road".

He said the unionists pointed out to him that while Sinn Fein stated that there would be decommissioning, the IRA had said the opposite on two occasions. "That is a difficulty I have to try to explain to the other side."

Mr O Caolain said there was a responsibility on both governments, and on the Taoiseach, to ensure that the terms of the agreement were pursued to the letter.

The Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, said that on a previous occasion in the Dail the Taoiseach had expressed the opinion that, as far as he was concerned, Sinn Fein and the IRA were the two sides of the one coin. If he still held that view, would he assert that it was the responsibility of the Sinn Fein leadership to deliver on the decommissioning aspect of the agreement?

Mr Ahern said he would imagine that was in conformity with what Sinn Fein would endeavour to do. But Sinn Fein would rightly say that when the matter was discussed in the agreement, there was never a position put down on a timetable.

The DL leader, Mr Proinsias De Rossa, said it was important that all sides were kept on board. Some declaration of intent from Sinn Fein, at the very least, that decommissioning would begin was surely not too much to ask.

Mr Ahern replied that he had already said a "more proximate view" of how the decommissioning programme was going to operate would be extremely helpful. "I don't really see what is the difficulty with that."