After four minutes in a Dublin courtroom yesterday, it would seem Beverley Flynn's political ambitions are back on track.
If Bertie Ahern can forgive and forget, surely the begrudgers could see it in their hearts to do the same? The Taoiseach sees her now as minister of state material.
The controversial Mayo TD wasn't in court to hear RTÉ accept €1.225 million from her in settlement of the €2.8 million she owed them following her failed libel action.
RTÉ should count itself lucky. As barrister Cian Ferriter pointed out to Judge Elizabeth Dunne, the national broadcaster would have come away with only three hundred grand if it had opted for the bankruptcy route. At least a settlement yielded four times that amount.
That's that, then. Case closed. The way looks clear now for Pee Flynn's daughter to return to the bosom of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary family. Why? Because that's the way Bertie wants it to be.
Deputy Flynn sued RTÉ's Charlie Bird and George Lee for reporting that she encouraged people to evade tax. Bev bridled at the mere idea, and has been doing so ever since.
Her denials - as a jury decided in 2001 - were simply not credible. The Supreme Court decided the same, going as far as to say she didn't have a reputation to defend. Then inspectors appointed by the High Court concluded that Beverley, while an executive with the National Irish Bank, knowingly flogged investment policies to wealthy people to help them dodge their tax obligations.
In mitigation, as Beverley has never tired of saying, she was in her twenties at the time and working as part of a sales team, acting on the instructions of more senior bank executives.
While many outraged commentators and members of the public see this as no excuse for facilitating people to break the law, it has to be said, in fairness, that she wasn't the only one at it. At the time, fast-talking, successful Bev probably didn't give a second thought to what she was doing. Her all-powerful employers had sanctioned it.
It would be hard to blame her if she thought that way.
As for her more fortunate colleagues who didn't become public representatives and so escaped journalistic scrutiny, they probably still look back on their early career with rose-tinted pride.
But supremely confident, startlingly articulate, scarily unflappable Bev chose to follow her father into politics. The ethical bar is set higher in that trade - or so Fianna Fáil, the main party of government for the last 25 years, would have us believe.
Beverley Flynn swore on oath she "never had a suspicion" in her mind that the offshore investment packages she was selling were anything other than legit. Which they were, provided the policyholder wasn't trying to hide Irish money.
Listening to her evidence, it became impossible to believe that the razor-sharp young Beverley - generously remunerated because of her abilities - had been too stupid to work out why some clients were willing to pay very high fees to her bank for taking suspiciously large wodges of cash off their hands.
After a very long trial, she lost.
In a flash, her party leader Bertie Ahern was on the radio telling the nation: "We take a very dim view of this particular case, and we have stated that I think people are extremely annoyed about this and believe that tax evasion is wrong and encouraging others to do it is equally wrong. We take a dim and a very serious view of all of this".
Deputy Flynn was thrown out of Fianna Fáil.
Dim view, and all that. What could Bertie do? Particularly as Beverly continued to insist she never did anything wrong while working with NIB.
She fared no better when called to give evidence to the Mahon tribunal.
Her father, former minister Padraig, and mother Dorothy gave evidence about large amounts of money that, unaccountably, sloshed their way into their various bank accounts - three of them with bogus London addresses.
Pee and Dorothy were delightfully baffled when the hard questions were put.
Beverley, when she asked if should could throw any light on her Dad's accounts, recalled making investments for him totalling £68,000 but couldn't remember any details of the transactions or whether her Dad had paid her in cash.
Tribunal lawyer Patricia Dillon accused her of having "selective amnesia".
Meanwhile, RTÉ was still chasing her for their legal costs. Beverley fought on, proclaiming her innocence and courting bankruptcy until last month, when she held her Dáil seat in the election.
In inviting the unrepentant Beverley Flynn to rejoin Fianna Fáil - with a promise of promotion - the Taoiseach has decided to take her word over the word of a High Court jury, over the word of the Supreme Court and over the word of a High Court inspectorate. He has also chosen to ignore her performance at the Mahon tribunal.
This is a fortunate turn of events, as now Bertie and Bev are of one mind. Deputy Flynn still doggedly clings to her mantra: "I did nothing wrong." She has settled her legal bill, and that is enough for the Taoiseach.
When he welcomes Beverley Flynn back to the fold, Bertie will be happy to know that, for a paltry €1.25 million, he has secured the return of the best Fianna Fáil parliamentary party member money can buy.