The leader of the Labour Party, Mr Ruairi Quinn, said yesterday that he would trust the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, during possible negotiations for a coalition government until he was proven wrong.
At the conclusion of the party's conference in Cork, Mr Quinn repeated that he wanted Fianna Fβil to go into opposition, and indicated that coalition between Labour and Fianna Fβil would only be as a last resort. However, if the situation did arise, Mr Quinn said he would be very careful about how he did business with Mr Ahern.
Earlier, Mr Quinn spoke about Mr Ahern's facility for "multi-dimensional speak", where different people could have a different impression of what the Taoiseach had said. Asked if he would trust Mr Ahern in possible coalition negotiations, Mr Quinn said: "I start off trusting everybody until I'm proven wrong. I'm basically an optimist."
Mr Quinn said that people often made comparisons between him and Mr Ahern because of their "coincidence of careers" .They had both been elected to the city council at the same time; served as ministers in the same departments; gone on to be party leaders; gone through marriage breakdowns and were now in new unions; both were Dubs. "But that's where the similarity ends," he said. "He's a very different person to me."
Mr Quinn said he was not "gasping" to go into Government but was "gasping to transform the country". He admitted he was disappointed with the result of yesterday's Sunday Independent/IMS poll which showed Labour's support had dropped by three points since May. Mr Quinn's satisfaction rating slipped to 47 per cent.
He said that at times like this, with an unstable international situation, people tended to "surge towards the security of Government". While he could not explain why the party was polling badly he believed the result would be different in a general election.