THE taoiseach has hinted that next year’s general election could be held later than the widely anticipated date of May 2007, and has conceded that Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats may need the support of independents to get back into office.

Bertie Ahern said he does not have to hold next year’s poll until July 8, a pointed contribution given that most speculation now centres around mid-May.

Delaying the election as long as possible would allow the government an opportunity to improve its opinion poll ratings. It could also gain maximum benefit from maturing special savings incentive accounts. Most of the €16 billion generated by the scheme will mature in the first part of next year, half of it in May.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the taoiseach said he would not make up his mind on the election date until “next summer”, but joked that with the hot weather this summer, July might be a better month.

Ahern admits his party will be “battling for the last seat in every constituency” if it fights the election with its current level of support. The latest MRBI poll put support for Fianna Fail down from 37% to 31%.

But the Fianna Fail leader predicted that voters would begin to ask tougher questions of the opposition nearer the date of the election and he again challenged the leaders of Fine Gael and Labour to publish the detailed policy platform they promised six months ago.

The taoiseach pledged not to engage in auction politics or to allow public spending to run out of control over the next year. He acknowledged that making progress on the crisis in the country’s accident and emergency (A&E) units would be crucial to the government’s fortunes next year.

Ahern said he feared the government would not be able to secure agreement on the necessary 24-hour cover by consultants and other frontline staff in high-tech hospital departments between now and the election.

“We have engaged with the staff. The one side I worry about, because I don’t think it is possible for us to do it in a year, . . . is getting the hospital services to do as they do in private hospitals, where they are open far longer hours,” he said.

“We are going to keep working on that. We may not get it into the position that I’d like to have it in by election time, but we are certainly going to keep up that programme.”

He said Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte, the Fine Gael and Labour leaders, were “nice guys, personally”, but had spent a lifetime hurling on the ditch. “They have never once put the ball into the back of the net for their country. They have never had to. They have never really been in positions of authority other than for a short period when they got in on an unelected basis (1994-97).”

The taoiseach said he was worried that “people who are untried, untested and who have no track record” might not be able to manage the economy, the peace process or EU affairs.

He said Fianna Fail was averaging 34% or 35% in a poll of polls, including MRBI and Red C. Asked if the figures made another Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrat coalition unlikely, Ahern said: “We’ll have to see as we go into the next election. In 1997 it was Fianna Fail, PDs, independents. If you were looking at it now on the figures, you would say that would be more likely than Fianna Fail and the PDs on their own.”

The taoiseach said the opposition parties had concentrated on “the negatives of the day” over the past several months without offering detailed policies of their own. Fianna Fail’s private research, he admitted, had found that negative opposition campaigning had been damaging to the government.

“There is an atmosphere of uncritical acceptance of complaint and attack by the opposition,” he said. “Whatever three or four things are causing annoyance are pumped up and feed into the cynicism. This ignores the fact that the country is doing better than practically any country in the world.”

“If we keep our cool, keep doing our work, produce the national development plan, Transport 21, get the social partnership agreement ratified . . . the electorate will begin to ask serious questions about the opposition.”

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