The Green Party is in danger of talking itself out of a central role in the next coalition, senior figures within Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have claimed.

The party, with 12 seats, is seen as representing the critical final step in bolting together a grand coalition of Fianna Fáil’s 37 seats and Fine Gael’s 35.

However, the slow pace of ‘marathon’ talks with the Greens has created ‘unease’ within Fianna Fáil over their capacity to cut a deal.

It comes after former Fianna Fáil government minister Dermot Ahern said that Green Party sources expect party leader Eamon Ryan to be Taoiseach for one year out of any five-year term agreed between the three parties.

In his column in this newspaper today, Mr Ahern writes of the Greens: ‘They are just as capable, as all the rest of the parties in fighting their corner when it comes to divvying out the spoils.’ However, the slow pace of talks means Fianna Fáil is applying far greater importance to planned negotiations with Independent rural groups next week.

Both the Denis Naughten-led Regional Independent Group of nine TDs and the Michael Fitzmaurice/Marian Harkin-led Independent rural group of six have indicated a willingness to cut a deal for government.

One senior Fianna Fáil source said: ‘Technically on these figures, the Greens are the best option, but they are talking us to death. They are treating government formation like some policy seminar or thirdlevel thesis. At the pace we are going we won’t be finished until the autumn’.

Mr Ryan, the Green Party leader, previously warned that negotiations to create a government could last longer than the record set in 2016.

On that occasion, negotiations lasted 63 days.

However, senior Fianna Fáil sources warned: ‘The public mood is changing. The voters are not going to tolerate us wandering around the Dáil for months having seminars or break-out meetings whilst a virus is rampaging through the country and the economy’.

It is, they said, ‘a case of get real or get out’, adding: ‘It’s time to end the amateur-hour stuff and put a government together.’ Within Fine Gael, unease is also growing over the prospect of a coalition with the Greens.

One source warned: ‘It will be hard enough to persuade our delegates to do a deal with the Fianna Fáil devil but asking them to tolerate the Greens as well may be an ask too far.’ They added that ‘the Greens are in real danger of talking themselves out of government.

They also noted: ‘Put bluntly, the Independents may be a far better bet yet.

‘We don’t, for example, know if the Greens can get a deal through.’