Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has accused the Taoiseach of using the 1916 commemoration to give a partisan Fianna Fáil view of history and to "airbrush from history" Fine Gael's contribution to the development of independent Ireland.
Mr Kenny said yesterday he was "surprised and disappointed" at Mr Ahern's keynote speech on the 90th anniversary of the Rising which identified the 1916 Rising and three historical events presided over by Fianna Fáil Taoisigh - including himself - as "the cornerstones of independent Ireland in the 20th century".
Mr Kenny's statement was strongly rejected by the Government yesterday. It marks the first open accusation from the Opposition parties that the Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil are using their revival of the 1916 Commemoration for partisan purposes.
Many Opposition politicians have privately voiced this suspicion since Mr Ahern announced the restoration of the annual Easter military parade at his last ardfheis, without consulting the opposition parties.
A Government spokeswoman rejected Mr Kenny's accusation. "As the Taoiseach said on Sunday, and on every occasion he has talked about this commemoration, it is for Irish people of all parties and none," she said.
"It is sad that Deputy Kenny is attempting to cast the Taoiseach's views in a partisan light. It is difficult to see what Deputy Kenny is trying to achieve with this overreaction. Both Garret FitzGerald and Liam Cosgrave were present when the Taoiseach delivered this speech and they received it in a generous and positive way."
In his speech, delivered at the opening of the 1916 exhibition at Collins Barracks, Mr Ahern said:
"From the Proclamation in 1916, to the Constitution in 1937, to the ratification of the Treaty of Rome in 1972, to the Good Friday agreement in 1998, the living generations of Irish people have time and again renewed their hope in the future. These four cornerstones of independent Ireland in the 20th century are the foundations of the future we are building today and tomorrow."
Mr Kenny said yesterday that it was "eminently regrettable" that "at a time of new inclusiveness and generous change of heart on this island" Mr Ahern had omitted "Fine Gael's enormous contribution" to building independent Ireland.
"For the sake of truth and genuine inclusiveness in our modern democracy, I want to make it absolutely clear that the huge contributions the Taoiseach omitted - W T Cosgrave's presiding over the birth of Irish democracy (1922-32); John A Costello's declaration of a Republic (1949); Liam Cosgrave's leading Ireland into the United Nations (1957); and Garret FitzGerald's signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985), were every bit as important as Mr Ahern's personal selection - de Valera's 1937 Constitution; Jack Lynch's ratification of the Treaty of Rome in 1972 and his own signing of the Good Friday agreement in 1998. "His omission and political attitude ill befit these important commemorations," he said. The Government spokeswoman yesterday pointed to an interview with the Taoiseach published in yesterday's Evening Echo. In it Mr Ahern said it was appropriate not only to honour those who fought in 1916 but "both the statesmen who founded the Free State, as well as those who stood by the Republic, recognising that they were all patriots, who shared the same ultimate objective of full national freedom by one route or the other".
He went on: "As far as I am concerned, Michael Collins, Eamon de Valera, Arthur Griffith and many of their leading contemporaries, were all great Irishmen, who played an equal and honourable part in winning Ireland's independence."
He had "no wish to diminish or take from the huge contribution of many people from other political affiliations to my own who played a noble part in securing Irish Independence . . . no party has a monopoly on Ireland's history".