"I WILL listen to what he (Mr Spring) has to say tomorrow night if I have time," was how the Fianna Fail leader, Mr Bertie Ahern, treated the negative views of the Labour Party leader on coalition with Fianna Fail.
Mr Ahern was speaking in Limerick yesterday after meeting the business community during a 14 hour visit. He was confident, he said, that the party would win back the seat lost in Limerick East and hold the two in the west - although it would be a difficult task without Gerry Collins.
While he declined to predict how many seats the party would return, he said there were four options in establishing a Fianna Fail government.
First was being able to go it alone, next a coalition with the PDs, and third with the help of others than the PDs. The final option was "when Mr Spring would see his party so depleted that he would be forced to come to us with an offer to help form a government.
"I take with a grain of salt Mrs Spring's remarks. He rolled out's the same things last time but he came to us when he could not do better."
Mr Ahern said he was very concerned about the situation in Northern Ireland, which he described as "gloomy" with the rise in sectarian violence.
He said it might be necessary to proceed to talks without Sinn Fein. "If they do not move in that way, the whole talks process will disintegrate. It is only for the patience of Senator George Mitchell and the helpful attitude of the American administration that the talks are still there."
He had been told by people in the US State Department that "Senator Mitchell will not stay around indefinitely".