The Taoiseach agreed with a call by the Democratic Left leader for a scaling down of marches in the North to avoid confrontation, but said that it was unlikely to happen.
Mr Proinsias De Rossa said he would be happier if all organisations in the North would voluntarily stop marching for at least 12 months. It would give people time to draw their breath and see how they could get the Belfast Agreement to work.
Mr De Rossa suggested that it would be worthwhile if the Taoiseach called on all parties, including Sinn Fein, to urge their members and their supporters to avoid confrontation over marches. People should accept the common sense view that conflict would only arise if there was opposition to a march.
Mr Ahern said it would be better "if everybody took a break from all of these things", particularly where there were likely to be hostilities.
"But that is unlikely to happen. We have to acknowledge that there are some areas where people are adamant that they will march. What we have to try to do is to see if we can find a way of avoiding conflict."
Mr De Rossa said that the attitude of the residents of the Lower Ormeau Road and the Garvaghy Road were not necessarily represented entirely by the residents' associations which had come to Dublin to meet the Taoiseach last week. There was a wide range of views about the marches in those areas.
Mr Ahern said that if both sides involved in the controversies relating to marches spoke to each other substantial progress could be made. But that was unlikely to happen over the next few weeks.
Mr Jim O'Keeffe (FG, Cork South West) said that some of the violence on the Garvaghy Road last weekend did not appear to be very spontaneous, and that there was an element of preparedness relating to petrol-bombs.
Mr Ahern said he would condemn such activity, adding that it seemed as if a number of petrol bombs and quite a large amount of debris of one kind and another were readily available. "It certainly does not help in what we are trying to do."
The security report, he said, had referred to gangs being in the area at that particular time and there had been no particular reference to any grouping, good, bad or indifferent.
Mr Caoimhghin O Caolain (SF, Cavan-Monaghan) said the reality from the information he had was that the "sinister hand" on the Garvaghy Road did not emerge from the local community or from organised nationalist resistance.