Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party will today receive final clarifications from the Irish and British governments on the details of a deal to restore Northern Ireland's power-sharing administration.
Yesterday the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, acknowledged that both sides are unlikely to get satisfactory responses from Dublin and London to "a small number of issues" on each side.
"In fairness to the parties, they have put in a lot of effort to give us comprehensive analyses. These issues have to be worked through," Mr Ahern said, speaking in Dublin.
The key points have not changed, he said. "We will do our best. People have to carry other people on these things. I understand that. We are into a period of days, rather than anything else."
Meanwhile the Sinn Féin president, Mr Adams, and Mr Martin McGuinness travelled to Dublin early yesterday morning, following late-night talks in London, to brief members of the party's ardchomhairle.
Following the meeting, Mr Adams said: "The DUP have yet to commit themselves to working with Sinn Féin in power-sharing institutions. Maybe in the next few days they will clarify that. Negotiations are not a matter of take, take, take. They are a matter of give and take. We have yet to see the DUP giving, but I caveat that by saying, thus far."
Some British quarters believe Mr Adams has taken a more "hawkish" attitude to the talks than that shown by Mr McGuinness and Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, but that analysis is disputed elsewhere.
"I listen to what Ian Paisley says and I am positive. I listen to the objectionable things he says and I get annoyed, so I don't know. What is for certain is that he is going to call it for his party," Mr Adams went on.
"But if they do not, for whatever reason, come up to the plate on all of this, then the governments need to move ahead and they cannot be given for ever to sort this out," He said Sinn Féin has not seen the DUP's objections to the draft plan.
"We were not told that. We have some sense of that, of course, but we were not told that. In fairness, we probably could not expect to be told that," he told The Irish Times.
"We haven't gone to the IRA on any of this. Our commitment in terms of the IRA is to go to them when we have a comprehensive agreement. We don't have a comprehensive agreement."
Reflecting Sinn Féin's "concern" that the DUP will secure IRA decommissioning moves and then fail to form the Executive in the early spring, he said: "That is coming back to us from republicans rights across this island."
Meanwhile, he said, Sinn Féin would not accept DUP demands that the membership of the Executive must be ratified by a majority vote of both communities in the Assembly.
"Parties have the right to nominate MLAs for ministries of their choice under d'Hondt and no other party can interfere with that," Mr Adams said.
In addition, the party would not accept efforts by the DUP to curb the powers granted to individual ministers under the Good Friday agreement, he added.
