The former Taoiseach, Mr Albert Reynolds, has criticised the way the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and other Fianna Fail figures handled the presidential nomination process which he lost to Mrs Mary McAleese.
He said he was only told after Mrs McAleese won the nomination that the party leadership had changed its view on his candidature. "I would have appreciated a telephone call just to say that, but I never received it," he said in an interview with VIP magazine. Mr Reynolds said he had not expressed an interest in the nomination and only put his name forward after Mr Ahern "persuaded" him over two luncheons to do so because "he believed I had a better chance of winning the Presidency back for Fianna Fail".
"Right up to the party meeting for nomination, I was still being assured that the support was there for me," Mr Reynolds said during the interview. However, he said, he was then told "the climate had changed" and there was a chance that a by-election in Longford would be lost.
"But that situation had always existed. That was the view and if the view had changed, which they were entitled to change, I would have appreciated a telephone call just to say that," he said.
Mr Reynolds, his wife, Kathleen, and members of their family are photographed extensively at their home in Ailesbury Road, Dublin, in the current edition of the magazine.
According to the magazine's editor, Ms Maura Kiely, Mr Reynolds and his wife agreed to the photographs "straight away". She said both of them wore make-up and the photographs took most of the day to shoot.
In the interview Mr Reynolds is asked about Mr Charles Haughey. "At present because of all the revelations and the tribunal, I'm sad and disappointed because the party and politics in general will definitely suffer if certain things are proven," he said.
In relation to his legal dispute with the Sunday Times, Mr Reynolds said: "I don't contemplate losing."
Asked to explain why he was pursuing the case he said: "I was accused by the Sunday Times of lying to the House and to my partners in government, which of course I never did. I felt that this was demeaning the office of Taoiseach and an insult to democracy."