The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Dermot Ahern, has expressed cautious optimism that an agreement to restore Northern Ireland's Executive and Assembly could be reached within the next fortnight.
"There are only two weeks. I think it will happen, but as my officials keep telling me, these things come off the rails all the time. All the signals that we are getting are positive enough," he said.
Also expressing hope that a deal can be struck, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said "a small window of opportunity" existed for progress.
"I hope they will be completed, but I can't be certain," he said speaking after the annual Fianna Fáil Wolfe Tone commemoration.
Meanwhile, the Taoiseach distanced himself somewhat from the declaration by the Minister for Foreign Affairs last week that Sinn Féin could be in government in the Republic quickly.
Denying advance knowledge of the Minister's actions, Mr Ahern said: "I didn't know Dermot Ahern was doing the interview because I was away. The first thing I heard about Dermot Ahern's interview was your newspaper's headlines on it," he told The Irish Times following his Bodenstown speech.
He added: "I have been asked this question 30 times. And I answered the question in a different way. Naturally enough, the way I answer it is what Government policy is."
Sinn Féin's possible involvement in a government in the Republic could not be "speculated about" until the IRA had fully decommissioned and disbanded.
However, he said Mr Ahern had made "the essential point" that the Constitution recognises the Defence Forces as the Republic's sole legitimate army.
"The essential point is that our Constitution states that there can only be one Óglaigh Na hÉireann. At the moment there are two. That's it. That answers the question. He said that," said the Taoiseach.
Clearly keen to dismiss suggestions that Sinn Féin could be part of the next coalition, Mr Ahern said he was "not going to speculate on the timescale".
The implementation of the Good Friday agreement has been tortuously slow. "Seven years later there is not a chance that I would say what will happen in the next year. I don't know what I will achieve by Christmas."
There is no point "making idle speculation about where we might be at Christmas, let alone where we are at next year, not to mind this time 2007".
He warned that the restoration of the Assembly and Executive could be put back for more than a year if a deal was not reached quickly.
"The coming weeks represent a window of opportunity to copper-fasten peace and stability. This opportunity must not be lost.
"Otherwise we risk having restoration of the institutions deferred for some considerable time."
The Minister for Foreign Affairs will meet with the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Mr Paul Murphy, in Dublin on Wednesday.
Progress has to be made within the next fortnight, the Taoiseach believes, to allow time for decommissioning, etc to take place in time for the Northern institutions to be re-established before the local and Westminster elections in May. If a deal is not reached quickly, the Taoiseach said, "people will drift back into political position". Progress could be put off indefinitely because the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, has to chair both the EU Council and the G8 next year.
Expressing little optimism about the talks, the chairman of Sinn Féin, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, said the Democratic Unionists were still "anti-agreement". "I don't know whether the DUP is talking about months or years," Mr McLaughlin told RTÉ's Week in Politics programme last night.
