THE TEXT message was sent at two minutes to five o'clock last Saturday afternoon. "Press release just gone to say Greens begin negotiations with FF 2mrow at 11 in Govt Bldgs. No-one avail 4 int'view." The unexpected courtship was underway. Both sides believed policy documents exchanged a few days previously left open sufficient room to explore the idea of forming a government.

A deal between Fianna F�il and the Green Party has long been Bertie Ahern's second preference to guarantee him another term as taoiseach.

The general election outcome left the Fianna F�il leader plenty to ponder.

His first choice of Fianna F�il and the PDs with a handful of independents would have the slimmest of D�il majorities. The second option of Fianna F�il and the Greens was in the same zone, but by including the PDs and some independents the arrangement became far more stable. Talking with the Labour Party was a third route but in senior Fianna F�il circles there was little appetite for sharing power with Pat Rabbitte and his colleagues.

Contacts with four of the five independents were established within days of the election result being known.

Jackie Healy Rae and Beverley Flynn were seen as secure, with sufficient sweeteners for their respective constituencies. Michael Lowry let it be known that he was interested in talking, and it didn't take long for Fianna F�il to conclude that the former Fine Gael minister was serious about doing a deal for his North Tipperary bailiwick.

There was a nervousness about Finian McGrath but even his apparent unpredictability was not enough to end discussions with the Dublin North Central TD.

Only Tony Gregory has been left outside the talks, a decision bred by local politics in the Dublin Central constituency he shares with Ahern.

While contacts with the independents were underway, Ahern spoke directly to Mary Harney. He still wanted to see the PDs as part of a new government despite the meltdown in the party's support. The PDs have made a big play about continuing in government with Fianna F�il. For defeated TDs like Tom Parlon and Fiona O'Malley, the decision was as much about their own political survival as the future of the party.

Bertie Ahern's finances But Harney was not among those in her party openly jumping on the 'get into government' bandwagon. She paid Enda Kenny the courtesy of hearing his pitch for a government involving all TDs bar Fianna F�il and Sinn F�in deputies. There were mutterings from senior PDs about unease over Ahern's finances. They talked about the danger of taking a third thumping if new information emerged during the early days of a new coalition.

Ahern was in a powerful position.

With 78 seats, Fianna F�il knew a deal with the PDs and independents would secure power. By including the Greens the arrangement was 'withdrawal proof '- any of the individual participants could leave but the coalition could continue in office.

Against this background, Fianna F�il was in talking mode. "No door that has been opened has yet been closed, " one Fianna F�il figure said last weekend. With a keen eye on the stability of any new coalition, Ahern, after discussions with his deputy leader Brian Cowen, sanctioned making contact with the Greens.

The two sides met last Sunday morning in ministerial offices between Government Buildings and Leinster House. Ground rules were established - no details of the discussions would be divulged to the media, nothing was agreed until everything was agreed, and the talks would be aimed to conclude by a Thursday evening deadline.

Fianna F�il's negotiating team - Brian Cowen, Noel Dempsey and S�amus Brennan - had been through this process before with the Progressive Democrats. They were also on home turf in their ministerial offices while their advisors and other back-up staff were located on site.

The process was, however, entirely new for the Green Party delegation, which consisted of John Gormley, Dan Boyle and Donal Geoghegan, the party's general secretary. They had to enter and leave Government Buildings several times a day like visitors to someone else's home. And their key advisors were based at the party's head office at Suffolk Street. At breaks in the talks Gormley and his colleagues would walk to Suffolk Street to meet with the party's reference group, which includes all the party's TDs as well as representatives of the wider party membership and local councillors.

Other key party advisors were also in attendance; across a big table they would pore over various policy documents.

40 hours of discussions The initial session between the two parties on Sunday lasted for three hours. Over the following five days there were almost 40 hours of direct discussions. Only the six negotiators were in the room but officials were on hand to provide briefing papers and background facts whenever information was sought to clarify matters of contention.

The mood ebbed and flowed throughout the week. Having reached broad agreement on economic and social welfare issues on Monday, S�amus Brennan said the parties had been "able to make very good progress on a whole range of departments".

Twenty-four hours later, after some tough talking on health policy, Brennan stated, "we made good solid progress.

There are still issues which we have only touched on that are quite substantial".

Asked if the parties could agree a deal, the Fianna F�il politician replied, "I believe we can. Am I certain? No, but I believe that we can." There was increased optimism after talking which lasted for almost seven hours on Wednesday.

'Best hopes not realised' On their way into the talks on Wednesday, Boyle and Gormley joked that the coffee on offer in Government Building "was not the best". Later that evening, Boyle felt confident enough to say that he still had a "sense" that a deal could be done given "the opportunity and the willingness" of the two parties.

But 24 hours later, Boyle was far more pessimistic. "The best hopes of everyone have not been realised. We are going to have to look at the situation as it is." Earlier in the day, Gormley had signalled that progress had slowed.

"These are very difficult negotiations, and there is no guarantee that we will reach agreement, " he said.

The Greens had booked the Mansion House for a day-long Sunday conference to allow party members adjudicate on any deal. With that deadline in mind, the two sides agreed that the negotiations would conclude on Thursday evening. "On timing, there is no other option to us, " Boyle asserted.

But they were back talking on Friday morning with a new deadline.

Common ground Lunchtime on Friday was, Boyle stated, "the furthest we can push this out in any conceivable sense". But the second deadline came and went. The Green Party had booked Buswells Hotel for a 3pm news conference, but by early afternoon the two negotiating teams were still ensconced in Government Buildings.

Fianna F�il sources were confident a deal would be done but the party was not prepared to concede too much policy ground. "There will be few shocks in any programme for government, " one informed Fianna F�il source said.

The agenda at the talks had been framed around key policy areas including the economy, social welfare, transport, planning, education and health.

The parties actually found common ground very quickly in many areas.

The Greens had no problem with Fianna F�il's plans to reform the PRSI system but they expressed unhappiness about future cuts in the top rate of income tax. Cowen and his colleagues were opposed to the Greens' preference for a carbon tax despite Boyle's argument that, as proposed, the tax would only add six cent to a litre of fuel.

The Greens wanted increased investment in public transport but, in a significant concession to Fianna F�il, this would be achieved without any reduction in the road investment programme in Transport 21. They achieved a commitment for a new rail link from Navan to Dublin and an extension of the Dart in Dublin.

Shannon 'not a stumbling block' There was little in these plans that Fianna F�il opposed and it was noted that, in recent months, the party had adopted a long-time Green proposal to plan for Luas systems in Cork and Galway. Concerns about the co-location hospital plan, speculated as one of the main problems in the discussions, were apparently eased when a background briefing paper was produced by the Fianna F�il team.

Green Party sources said the US military's use of Shannon airport was discussed but was never a stumbling block for their delegation. The Green side was frustrated at the lack of specifics from Fianna F�il on environmental policy and they found little Fianna F�il interest in their concerns about business donations to politicians.

By Friday afternoon the list of outstanding issues was not lengthy, but from a Green Party perspective, they were hugely important. "We cannot go into government without a real sense that it will be a very different type of government, " one party figure said.

And, in a sense, the differences between the two parties were almost as much cultural as political. The Greens wanted a new type of government. They talked about transforming Irish society. Fianna F�il, after ten years in office, was more concerned with an incremental improvement across all areas of Irish life.

'We actually got to like them' A decision was taken to end the talks.

There was no agreement on climate change proposals, a massive investment programme for education and an overhaul of the planning system. There was no rancour involved.

"We shook hands and wished them well. We actually got to like them, " Gormley later joked, adding, "and Brian Cowen even said he got to like us." Significantly, at a press conference in the Shelbourne Hotel on Friday evening, Trevor Sargent left the door ajar for another go at a deal. " Fianna F�il knows what we need, " he said.

Bertie Ahern can now choose to respond to those needs or opt instead to finalise a deal for his original first choice, a Fianna F�il-PD-Independent government.

Fianna F�il on the Greens. . .

"This country needs Green Party economics like lettuce needs slugs."

- Sports minister John O'Donoghue N1 "The Greens are a rabid crowd of tree-hugging, muesli-eating wackos."

- John O'Donoghue "The Green Party is ethically two-faced. It is the latest 'do as I say, not as I do' party on the political firmament."

- John O'Donoghue, D�il debate, 2 March 2006 "[The Greens are]? the high priests of Irish politics."

- John O'Donoghue, D�il debate "[The Greens are]? the white knights of fresh air." - John O'Donoghue, 2 March 2006

COMPILED BY CONOR MCMORROW