BERTIE AHERN HAS said Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s relationship could go “one way or another” by the end of this term in government.

The former Taoiseach also said there are “too many parties” and that some should amalgamate before the next general election.

He was speaking in Trinity College Dublin as he received the Law Society’s Praeses Elit Award for his contribution to discourse in public life.

Asked how he thinks the relationship between the two government parties will play out, Ahern said it’s unclear.

“If you take it that this government will hold its term to the end of the decade, it’s then almost 15 years of confidence and supply … that then goes one way or another. 

They could break up, murder each other, or they could continue on to make love to each other.

“I’m not sure which way that’ll go.”

He referenced how in Germany two major parties, CDU and SPD, were in coalition for decades and were “working very well” under Angela Merkel despite some “ups and down”.

“Now it’s kind of broken up and they’re going back into their silos again.”

In Ireland, he says, “it’ll become a really interesting question in 2028/29″.

“My own view is that there’s too many parties, to be honest. They should all amalgamate into each other and then life would be far simpler … whether that will happen, I don’t know.”

He added that by the time the next general election comes around, what the public considers a centre-left or centre-right party could change.

‘Too many houses’

Ahern also spoke of his career regrets. He said his goverment built “too many houses” and should’ve slowed down contruction.

“What I was accused of in the last few years [in government] was building too many houses.

“A lot of that was public pressure, public opinion – all the experts and all the economists who know everything about everything.

[They said] it’ll take 50 years to fill all the houses, and what bullshit that was. In reality, it took three.

“But we probably should’ve slowed it down a bit earlier. We were still giving incentives … now people are saying they should be giving incentives, but we should’ve probably stopped earlier.

“If I had my way again, we would have probably got that 90,000 houses somewhere down to about 50,000. If we had have done that, we would’ve stabilised it at 50,000. But what happened was, the year before I [left government] it was 87,000 houses and about two years later we built 8,000 homes.”

He said that he has since told his successors that they made a “fatal mistake” in getting rid of the housing programme that had been in place. 

Former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy have since admitted their regret that they didn’t make housing the top priority soon enough.

Murphy claimed senior government figures had blocked his attempts to create radical change in housing.