The Taoiseach said he had no knowledge of an IRA army council meeting to discuss decommissioning.

"I have absolutely no information other than the speculation which has been around," Mr Ahern added. "I believe there was a meeting somewhere over the weekend but I have no information about what the conclusion was."

He was replying to the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, who asked what he made of reports that the army convention of the IRA had decided there would be some decommissioning of Semtex.

Mr Ahern was asked by the Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, if he had any reason, other than media reports, to believe that a meeting of the IRA army council had taken place and that it had decided, among other things, to make some kind of positive move on decommissioning.

On the basis of the information he had, was he optimistic about meeting the timetable to enable the agreement go "live" in February?

Mr Ahern replied: "I have to be optimistic, but we have lost a number of weeks. Quite frankly, what happened in the early hours of Thursday morning was really what I had hoped would be the finality to a position which we were at four full weeks ago. Nothing really changed, but it did change in the last minute of the meeting.

"We have really lost, in my view, about two months. We have not moved an inch in four weeks. The danger is we can lose more weeks. The perception outside could be that there are enormous changes going on, and I just want to be helpful and constructive. Really, things have not changed for four or five weeks . . . When we are losing time, we are not getting down to finalising the legislative matters."

Mr Ahern said the Northern Assembly was due to meet next week but the parties would not really return until Sunday night. So there were "horrendous difficulties". He added: "Anyway, you play the card you are given, and I will do my best with the cards I have."

Mr Quinn said the impasse in the entire array of the talks was in part related to the perceived lack of movement on the question of decommissioning.

Asked again by Mr Quinn if he was optimistic about possible movement on decommissioning by the IRA, the Taoiseach said he was always very careful not to mislead the House.

"I am always optimistic, but I have nothing to make me particularly optimistic. I think I could be more optimistic from sources elsewhere on movement about locating the bodies of the missing people."

Asked by Mr Bruton how many North-South bodies there would be, the Taoiseach said: "At least six. Last week, at one stage, we thought we had agreed eight, but that changed. I still think there are eight on the table. I certainly had moved to a situation three weeks ago, in discussions, where eight were what we were talking about.

"I have to state that the UUP deputy leader, Mr John Taylor, made it quite clear to Prime Minister Blair at the very end of the meetings, in the early hours of Thursday morning, that he believed there could only be six."