The Labour Party leader, Mr Ruair∅ Quinn, has immediately accepted a challenge from Mr Gerry Adams to a public debate, calling for it to be televised and to cover "all aspects of politics".
A spokesman for Mr Quinn said yesterday he agreed in principle to the idea of a television confrontation with the Sinn FΘin President, after Mr Adams accused Labour of "running scared" of his party.
Mr Adams was reacting to scathing criticism of Sinn FΘin from Mr Quinn in his party conference speech in Cork on Saturday night. He said on RT╔ Radio One's This Week programme that Mr Quinn had made "scurrilous remarks" about his party.
The weekend exchanges reflect growing pre-election tension between the two parties. Labour and Sinn FΘin will be competing for seats in several constituencies.
Senior Labour figures confirmed yesterday that the party has decided to take a tougher aggressive stance against Sinn FΘin. As an opinion poll yesterday showed a further fall in Labour's support and a rise in Sinn FΘin's, a Labour source said: "The approach of ignoring them clearly isn't working." In his conference speech on Saturday Mr Quinn accused Sinn FΘin of wanting to stir up "base instincts" of sectarianism and hatred in the Republic.
He condemned the appearance of Republican murals and posters of the H-Block hunger-strikes around Dublin, saying Sinn FΘin was attempting to mark out territory.
Mr Quinn centred his attack on Sinn FΘin on their failure to say the war in the North is over; the IRA's failure to decommission; the arrests in Columbia of three men closely associated with the republican movement; and Sinn FΘin's refusal to sign up to policing.
"I never believed that the Republican movement would sign up to the new policing arrangements in Northern Ireland", Mr Quinn said. "They don't support the Garda Siochana down here either."
Mr Adams said he agreed with much of the criticism of the Government that had been voiced by Mr Quinn. But the economic and social failures were "also a reflection on the quality of the opposition and particularly the quality of the Labour Party which styles itself as the social democratic opposition to what is happening."
Challenging Mr Quinn to a debate he called on him to "come off his negative campaigning".
He said the issue of decommissioning had been seized on in the past by opponents of the Belfast Agreement "and now because Labour is running scared it is being seized on by them as well".