A senior opposition politician stood in front of a BBC camera in the grounds of Dublin Castle last Saturday as the referendum results came in. He was waiting patiently to do a live interview on the latest triumph for the Government, for Fianna Fail and Bertie Ahern.
"You think they can do no wrong now," he remarked to a journalist before he went on air to pay homage to the achievement of Mr Ahern and others. "But the only predictable thing in this game is its unpredictability. They could be going great and then they'd wake up one morning and find the whole thing collapsing around them."
The trouble hit very quickly indeed. On Thursday Magill magazine reported that the former minister for foreign affairs, Ray Burke, had asked for and received a cheque for £30,000, made out to cash from Rennicks Manufacturing Ltd, a subsidiary of Fitzwilton Plc, in June 1989. At the time Rennicks was seeking substantial IDA grants. It received such grants for capital, research, training and other purposes before and after this payment was made.
The revelation raised a number of problems for Mr Ahern and the Government:
Mr Ahern told the Dail on Thursday: "The first time I found out about Rennicks was when the affidavit of discovery for the Flood tribunal was being prepared by Fianna Fail party officials [in March this year]". In fact Mr Dick Spring gave him a note detailing the allegation last autumn.
On September 5th last Mr Ahern confirmed Mr Ray Burke's assertion that £10,000 he gave to Fianna Fail headquarters in June 1989 related to a £30,000 donation he had received from Mr James Gogarty of Joseph Murphy Structural Engineering. On October 8th he stuck by this version during a Dail debate. In fact the £10,000 came from the donation from Rennicks. Mr Ahern never went to the Dail to correct this inadvertent misleading of the House.
Mr Ahern said last year he had gone "to extraordinary lengths" to inquire into the allegations concerning money received by Mr Burke. However, he had not discovered that the £10,000 came from Rennicks, a fact that could be gleaned from Fianna Fail's own cash receipts book. Nor can he recall asking Mr Burke about the donation from Mr Gogarty.
An impression was created last year that Mr Dermot Ahern had conducted a thorough inquiry into the alleged payments to Mr Burke before he was appointed minister for foreign affairs. In fact, Mr Ahern had merely asked one person if he had given money to Mr Burke.
As Bertie Ahern was picking his Cabinet last year, the choice of minister for foreign affairs was particularly delicate. This person would have to handle the most important negotiations in relation to Northern Ireland in the history of the State.
Mr Ahern chose Ray Burke. He had heard the persistent rumours concerning Mr Burke, planning and money which went back to 1974, but ail, was not put off by the rumours. The latest of these said that in June 1989 Mr Burke had received £40,000 from James Gogarty of Joseph Murphy Structural Engineering and a further £40,000 from Bovale Developments Ltd in connection with a land deal in north Dublin. This money, it was alleged, was handed to Mr Burke at a meeting in his home during the election campaign.
Bovale insists it gave no money to Mr Burke. Mr Burke has said the amount received from Mr Gogarty was £30,000.
When these allegations were made public last July, Mr Ahern said he had gone "to extraordinary lengths" to find out about the alleged payment from Mr Gogarty. It appears now that, apart from asking Mr Burke, just one check was made. Mr Dermot Ahern asked Mr Murphy in London if he had given Mr Burke this money. Before the Cabinet was appointed, Dermot Ahern reported that Mr Murphy had said he had not.
And that was it. Nobody went to speak to James Gogarty, who alleged that money had been given to Mr Burke. The lack of serious investigation now seems extraordinary.
Another matter concerned Mr Ahern. The Taoiseach had asked senior civil servants to investigate Mr Burke's role in the granting of 11 Irish passports to a wealthy Saudi businessman and his family in 1990. It is understood that Mr Burke was asked to do this by the then Taoiseach, Mr Haughey.
An internal Department of Justice inquiry had shown that statutory procedures for the naturalisation of foreigners had been breached. And naturalisation certificates for the 11 were signed by Mr Burke in December 1990, the night before Mr Haughey handed over the passports.
Mr Ahern felt the need to reassure himself again shortly after Mr Burke's appointment, when he again asked civil servants to examine the matter.
Overall, Mr Ahern's willingness to ignore rumour was considerable. Mr Burke had faced media and Garda investigations over alleged planning malpractices since 1974 and had been, as he said himself, the subject of rumour on many occasions since then.
Mr Burke had been chosen by Mr Ahern for promotion in 1994 as soon as Mr Ahern won the leadership of the party. Mr Burke was thus rescued from the political darkness into which he had been cast by Albert Reynolds, when he became Taoiseach in 1992.
His rescue by Mr Ahern showed again his great capacity for political survival. In December 1979 he backed Mr George Colley in the Fianna Fail leadership contest won by Mr Haughey. Despite this, he was retained as a minister for State and became a full cabinet minister less than a year later.
In January 1983 he ended up on the wrong side of an anti-Haughey heave and was removed from the front bench. Again Mr Haughey displayed uncharacteristic forgiveness and Mr Burke was soon back as environment spokesman and was in cabinet when the party returned to power in 1987.
In 1989 he was among those who offered Mr Haughey the disastrous advice to call a general election in an attempt to win an overall majority. Fianna Fail returned to power only at the price of losing two Cabinet seats to the Progressive Democrats. Mr Burke had failed to bring in his running mate, Mr G.V. Wright, in Dublin North.
There was speculation that he would lose his cabinet seat to make way for the PDs. Instead, he was promoted, being appointed minister for justice and communications.
Rescued again by fellow Haughey ally Mr Ahern, Mr Burke was placed at the centre of power in Fianna Fail. He was spokesman on foreign affairs and he and Mr Ahern were politically close allies.
His appointment as minister for foreign affairs last June was followed almost immediately by the eruption of further controversy concerning himself, planning and money.
We now know that in June 1989 Mr Burke received two payments of £30,000. The first was given to him in his home by James Gogarty in cash in an envelope. It is now the subject of inquiry by the Flood planning tribunal.
The second was also given to him in his home in June 1989 in a cheque made out to cash from Rennicks, a subsidiary of Fitzwilton, of which Dr Tony O'Reilly is chairman. This, it is alleged, was solicited by Mr Burke during a meeting with representatives of Rennicks in connection with IDA grants sought by the company. The company manufactures road signs.
Fitzwilton said yesterday that it neither sought nor received favours as a result of making this payment.
This was not the first time Mr Burke had crossed the path of a company associated with Dr O'Reilly. In the late 1980s he issued licences for the operation of the MMDS television transmitter system. Of the 29 licences Mr Burke awarded in 1989, seven were awarded to Princes Holdings, a company owned by Independent Newspapers, which is controlled by Dr O'Reilly. A further 13 licences were awarded to two companies in which Independent Newspapers had minority interests.
The licensees were given a legal monopoly to provide non-domestic television signals, and Princes Holdings thus believed it had this monopoly in large parts of the State. £65 million was invested in the company on this basis, yet illegal operators were operating in many areas, thus depriving Princes Holdings of the monopoly to which it was entitled.
On February 4th, 1991, as minister for justice and communications, Mr Burke signed a letter to Joe Hayes, former managing director of Independent Newspapers, stating: "Immediately MMDS service is available in any of your franchise regions, my Department will apply the full rigours of the law to illegal operations affecting that franchise region. My Department will use its best endeavours to ensure that there are no illegal broadcasting systems affecting that region within six months after the commencement of MMDS transmissions".
Five years later in 1996 this had not happened. TDs in areas where illegal operators were threatened, fearful of a backlash from the electorate, lobbied hard to prevent Government action against them.
In the autumn of 1996 Dr O'Reilly personally asked the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, to enforce the exclusive MMDS licence by closing down the illegal operators. Around the same time, in September 1996, representatives of Independent Newspapers (INP) told the rainbow coalition that they would "lose INP as friends" if the matter was not resolved satisfactorily.
The chief executive of Independent Newspapers, Liam Healy, has rejected the interpretation that this was a threat to use the group's newspapers to criticise the government. Rather, he said, it was intended to suggest that Independent Newspapers might "no longer be able to restrain its international partners from taking legal action through Princes Holdings to seek compensation for losses arising from the government's inaction on the illegal operators".
On the eve of the election last June a front-page editorial in the Irish Independent, headlined "For years we have been bled white - now it's payback time", called on voters to support Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats.
According to the Independent Newspapers minute of the September 4th meeting, Mr Donlon "asked what else we might be offered to help us settle". The minute then lists three options which were discussed, including extension of the 10-year MMDS licences, the granting of telephony licences and the sale of Cablelink to Princes Holdings.
Just this week Liam Healy of Independent Newspapers, which half-owns Princes Holdings, confirmed that the company was still interested in developing its own telephone and cable television network. Princes Holdings has indicated that it may bid for Cablelink.
The issue which finally provoked Mr Burke's resignation was his handling of the issuing of the 11 passports to Sheikh Khalid and his family. Two days after it was reported in this newspaper that Mr Ahern had investigated his handling of this matter three times, Mr Burke announced his resignation from the Cabinet and the Dail.
But while he was able to resign from political life he appears unable to resign from political controversy.