INSIDE POLITICS - TALKS FAIL

We are still trying to digest the news that the talks between Fianna Fail and the Greens failed and parse the flurry of words we have had since then to get something definite out of them.

There have been conflicting reports on whether this is merely a pause orthe end. Most of the Greens I have spoken to think it's all over, that it's impossible, that the gaps are just too wide.

But some FFers are still saying it's possible, that the famous Green Party meeting on Sunday was maybe a monkey the negotiators needed to get off their backs. Sure, the Dail comes back next Thursday but it doesn't necessarily mean we need to have a Government formed by then. That could be just the prelude for further negotiations with the Greens or - perish the thought - with Labour.

As a property though FF now come with an encumbrance - it's called the Progressive Democrats. That might be biddable for the Greens but not for the Labour Party.

Bertie Ahern said his first option was the PDs and the like-minded independents. But I sense that FF are nervous about that arrangement and its innate instability. While the Greens are now saying that a deal is unlikely, politics can sometime be more that the art of the possible - can elevate itself into the art of the impossible.