By Mairead Carey

Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern has described the latest twist in the Stormont gate affair as “as bizarre as it gets,” but will not seek a public inquiry into the spy ring fiasco.

The Irish government has decided that it is best to leave the spy allegations which brought down Stormont in the past and push on with trying to rebuild the peace process.

Ahern said that he always had doubts about the affair. Stormontgate had never made sense to him and the dropping of charges made even less, he told reporters.

The affair had caused “a lot of grief” for the two governments, he said. He spoke of how “hundreds of troops” had descended on the Stormont building over “what we were told at the time was irrefutable evidence.”

But the charges then “vanished like snow in June, with no prosecutions.”

“We are now being asked to believe that the senior Sinn Fein administrator at Stormont turned out to be an agent of the British security service. That takes some twist of even my imagination,” Ahern said.

But the government has decided not to press the British government on the issue, or look for a public inquiry into the affair.

Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern said on Tuesday that the Stormontgate scandal will not hold up the peace process in the North.

Speaking after talks with Northern Secretary Peter Hain, Ahern said people were confused and wanted more information, but the Irish and British governments would not be distracted from the work of pushing forward the peace process.

Bertie Ahern and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are to return to Belfast next month, to begin discussions with all the parties in a bid to re-establish the Stormont institutions.