The Taoiseach has again said he would not have appointed Ray Burke to his Cabinet in 1997 if he had known then about him what he knows now.
Mr Ahern was responding to a question in the Dáil from the Socialist Party TD Mr Joe Higgins. Last week, Mr Ahern said he had no evidence Burke was corrupt before he appointed the TD for Dublin North as foreign affairs minister in 1997.
Mr Higgins asked the Taoiseach, in view of Burke's conviction last week, to explain why he appointed Burke to the Cabinet and why he "savaged" those who questioned him for taking that decision at the time.
Burke, a former Fianna Fáil minister in the departments of justice, communications and foreign affairs, was jailed last week for six months for failing to make tax returns on over £100,000 over a 10-year period between 1982 and 1991.
Mr Higgins said the Taoiseach "must explain", because when Fianna Fáil was "mired in corruption and sleaze in the 1980s", nobody believed he did not know what was going on.
"You were the party fixer, you were the runner for party leader Mr Haughey. It is simply not credible you did not know what Mr Burke and his team of cronies were up to with rezonings and land corruption," Mr Higgins said.
He said the Taoiseach may have kept his own face out of the "feeding frenzy at the speculators' trough", but he knew it was there, knew who was bucketing the swill into it and knew "who the biggest snouts were slurping from it". Mr Ahern had "simply let them at it", Mr Higgins claimed.
"You knew, but you said nothing, because if you did, of course, you would get the Fianna Fáil equivalent of the concrete shoes, feeding with the small fishes on the backbenches and you were not going to jeopardise your career by taking a moral stand.
Responding, the Taoiseach said Mr Higgins had made a statement of his views and there was no point in him trying to change those views.
He said the sentence imposed on Ray Burke demonstrated that "any citizen who breaks the law will face the full rigours of the law".
"I'm satisfied that justice has been done and been seen to be done and the people of Ireland can therefore have faith in our system of justice," Mr Ahern added.
He reminded Mr Higgins that it was due to the penalties set out in the tax amnesty of 1993 that former deputy Burke "got unstuck".
"And that's how he's ended where he is today."
Mr Ahern acknowledged he had been criticised for appointing Burke to the Foreign Affairs portfolio in 1997, but said his view was based on his "bona fide view" then.
"Of course if I knew then what I know now, years later, after all of the investigations, then I wouldn't have appointed him."