The Taoiseach has said he hopes 100,000 people will attend summer cultural events at Farmleigh, the official State guesthouse in the Phoenix Park, Dublin.
Mr Ahern was speaking as he launched the four-month programme of musical and other events. They include the RTÉ Farmleigh Proms, Rat Pack and Glenn Miller evenings, and classical and operatic favourites including the Anna Livia Opera Company.
Other events will involve celebrity chefs Mr Paul Rankin and Mr Richard Corrigan; food fairs; literary readings and talks; book fairs; story-telling, and gardening events featuring Ms Helen Rock, Mr Dermot O'Neill, Mr Diarmuid Gavin and Ms Mary Reynolds.
The house and grounds will be open to the public on most Saturdays, Sundays and bank holiday Mondays until October 31st. Also open now are the newly refurbished boat-house tearooms.
Mr Ahern said it gave him great pleasure to launch "open season" at Farmleigh for the next four months. The new boathouse tearooms would serve as a café for the public and would also offer comfortable facilities for the press during official State visits.
He said Farmleigh, the palatial late-Victorian former home of the Guinness family, was "a beautiful house, beautifully restored, in beautiful grounds". He hoped it would be well used with "people dropping in and out".
The house and its grounds would be a "place of tranquillity, hospitality and entertainment" and, uniquely these days, would be free of charge.