The price of keeping the Progressive Democrats in Government lay in a public admission by the Taoiseach that he had actually agreed with the Tanaiste to explain "in the Dail" his intervention in the Sheedy case.
He was also required to apologise. But it was clarification of precisely the nature of their agreement on how to divulge his involvement that led to the Tanaiste and her parliamentary party staying put.
Enraged by the Taoiseach's vagueness on Monday about precisely what Ms Harney expected of him, the PDs insisted Mr Ahern be explicit. His statement of Tuesday night dealt with the immediate problem, but a scar remains.
By the time the Taoiseach yesterday rose to explain to the Dail his "representations" in the Sheedy case, the danger of a Government collapse had passed.
Events of the last few days have inflicted serious damage on the Fianna Fail/PD alliance - though the Government has been salvaged for now. A veil of phlegmatic diplomacy has been drawn over the rage, and embarrassment, that rocked the junior partners at the start of the week.
According to the party's former leader, Mr Des O'Malley, last night, "things were extremely bad up to Tuesday night when the statement of apology was made.
"That helped to put things back on an even keel. We took a very serious view indeed of what the Taoiseach said on Monday night when he implied that Mary Harney had not asked him certain things. He had agreed to comply with her request and then declined to do it and sought to suggest she never asked", he added.
The Taoiseach managed to rectify the situation "by taking the opposing view on Tuesday night to what he said on Monday night".
Where now stand the PDs in coalition? "It is back to where it was before", he said.
The party's former chairman, Senator John Dardis, went into the Dail chamber for yesterday's three-hour session of statements and questions.
"I suppose there is a tension, a hangover, from this. Perhaps in the immediate aftermath, people are going to be a bit tense. But, my experience is - give it three weeks and it will settle", he said.
The episode highlighted again "the need to keep lines of communications open and to ensure agreements are complied with and honoured".
Mr Dardis's Senate colleague, Helen Keogh, judged the Taoiseach to have provided the Dail with "a reasonable explanation and detail of what transpired.
"I don't think that anything put to him by the Opposition threw any different light on the matter", she added.
But has the alliance been damaged? "The sequence of events in the last few weeks has not been helpful. It is better that things like this would not happen".
Sen Mairin Quill put it bluntly. There is much "mixed feeling" because all this could have been avoided "and ought to have been avoided".
"If the Taoiseach had heeded what was said by Mary Harney and put the information about the representation - or inquiry as he would prefer to call it - openly into the Dail record, it would all have been avoided", she said.
Instead, what ensued had a "very unsettling effect on the Government and on the House".
"You can sense it all over the House . . . the House is very uncertain".
But the Taoiseach had clarified fully the extent of what happened and she "accepted" his word. Listening to his statement, it was clear the letter from Mr Philip Sheedy snr, seeking assistance for his son, was "fairly routine".
"The key thing is that no action was taken on foot of the Taoiseach's representations - unlike what happened in the courts. But, it was a lapse of judgement on his part", Ms Quill added.
It was critical the Taoiseach clarify that the Tanaiste had actually asked him to put the information into the record of the House.
"It had to go into the Dail records. The idea of the public domain had no status. Mary Harney was very specific and once he acknowledged that, it took a lot of heat out of the situation", she said.
The PDs now felt two emotions - relief and hope.
"We do hope that situations of this nature can be averted because they are damaging and deeply distressing. It the outcome is that this can be avoided in the future, maybe a lesson has been learned", Ms Quill said.