The Taoiseach and Mr Blair return more in hope than confidence, writes Gerry Moriarty.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, once again travel to Hillsborough Castle tomorrow to engage in some more "straight talking" with the North's political parties.
Primarily they want to discuss with Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness what one Dublin observer describes as the elephant in the room.
This is the large grey animal that hitherto the governments have been prepared for practical reasons to ignore as they pass around the tea and sandwiches.
It's a metaphor for the IRA. "We've tried ignoring it for years, but we can't ignore it any more," said the same observer.
"The time for creative ambiguity is over, we have to get the elephant out of the room." The two leaders are convinced there are just two remaining issues to be resolved - paramilitarism (the elephant) and whether unionists will share power with Sinn Féin. All other problems would fall into place if these key matters could be settled, they feel.
They believe they have a reasonable fix on the unionists' position: that they would share power if the IRA closed up shop. But Mr Ahern and Mr Blair are assuredly of the view that the most pressing of the two issues is whether P. O'Neill and his colleagues will paint a "Gone Out of Business" sign on the locked steel shutters of the IRA store. And, as was evident during the St Patrick's week sojourns, the US administration agrees with them.
Mr Ahern and Mr Blair will strive to inject some momentum into the process over the coming weeks. And they are going to be difficult weeks, what with the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) report on IRA and other paramilitary activity due out before Easter, and British publication of the Cory report into the controversial killings of Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson, Robert Hamill and Billy Wright released in the next week or so.
If the Cory report is published in reasonably open form then, of course, there will be repercussions, not least about the allegations of British security force collusion in some of the killings. But if the published report is relatively frank, these are matters that can be dealt with by independent (and low cost?) inquiries.
The IMC findings will be trickier, particularly if, as seems likely, it is found that the IRA was responsible for the attack on republican dissident Bobby Tohill four weeks ago. Then what happens? Does the IMC propose sanctions or not? Either way be sure of rows and recriminations.
One possible means of finessing the IMC findings would be for tomorrow's talks to actually achieve or herald progress, such as the real possibility that the IRA could or would sign up to paragraph 13 of last spring's Hillsborough joint declaration which requires paramilitaries to end all activity.
As well as an end to paramilitarism, Mr Ahern and Mr Blair also want Sinn Féin to accept that the changes to policing effectively meet the Patten requirements and that the party should join the Policing Board, notwithstanding reports that the IRA has insisted Sinn Féin stay off the board.
President Bush's Irish envoy Mr Mitchell Reiss's strong weekend comments about Sinn Féin uttering "massive untruths" on policing just served to reflect the general Irish-British-US sense of frustration at the refusal of republicans to sign.
Mr Adams will probably argue, as Mr McGuinness did at the weekend, that rather than carp about republicans there should be movement on other issues such as demilitarisation, justice, policing, human rights, and the Irish language. And if the British government shows good faith, the IRA could respond.
"That can't work any more," was the response from a senior Dublin source. "The time for such incrementalism is long gone. We need those acts of completion now." What's problematic is whether the IRA and Sinn Féin are ready to move.
Signals at the moment are hardly promising. "It was hard to tell in the US whether republicans were still in denial or in listening mode about the need for the IRA to go away. We were not getting a reaction at all," said one Dublin insider.
The other possibility is that, if republicans are seen to be solely at fault for the stalemate, Dublin could start providing cover for the SDLP to enter into a voluntary coalition with the DUP, UUP and Alliance. This is dangerous territory for the SDLP and a least-favoured option - but it is being talked about.
At his party's recent ardfheis Mr Adams indicated that if Sinn Féin wishes it can stall and filibuster until hell freezes over. There's no gainsaying the truth of that statement but the governments can stonewall as well, and right now they seem prepared to do so if republicans won't lead that elephant back to the jungle.