DUBLIN-Fresh from winning a third term in office, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said on Friday he regarded finance minister Brian Cowen as his "obvious successor".
"He (Cowen) is a hugely experienced politician," Ahern told RTE Radio in an interview. "I think from my point of view, it is obviously the party that will decide ... He is the obvious successor to me in five years' time or whenever."
Ahern, 55, has said this will be his last term in office and he plans to retire in 2012.
Ahern's centrist Fianna Fail party clinched a deal this week with the Green Party, two members of the pro-business Progressive Democrats (PDs) and four independent deputies to create a coalition government and extend its decade in power.
Cowen, 47, assumed the additional role of deputy prime minister on Thursday and it appears he is being groomed to take over from Ahern at some stage.
Ireland's media have speculated Ahern may be pressed to step down before 2012. They have drawn parallels with Britain's Tony Blair and his finance minister Gordon Brown who will succeed Blair as prime minister later this month.
"My intention up till today is to stay in this job," Ahern told RTE. "I have promised to myself all along that I would stay until the end of the term. That is my plan."
Ahern's relationship with Cowen is less fraught than that of Blair and Brown.
Fianna Fail emerged largely unscathed from a May 24th national election with 78 legislators in the 166-seat Dail (lower house of parliament) but needed new allies after its PD coalition partners suffered big losses.
Despite criticising Ahern for his social and environmental record during the election, two Greens were among the new cabinet members and will oversee energy and environment policy.
After holding his first cabinet meeting late on Thursday, Ahern said he hoped the parties would work together.
"Of course there will be differences," he told RTE on Friday. "But people have to be mature enough to understand that they work for solutions."
"Once we sit around that table, we are there in constitutional positions working for and with the Irish people."
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