Micheal Martin wore his most plaintive face for the six o'clock news: "People," he said, were "sick and tired of the allegations that are coming out."
He's right, of course; except that he and his colleagues are beginning to blame the opposition, The Irish Times and anyone but Fianna Fail for the political oil slick now drifting in on every tide.
What worried Mr Martin was Geraldine Kennedy's latest instalment in the familiar series Passports for Sale.
He wasn't the only senior member of the party to be alarmed by the report. Bertie Ahern, Mary O'Rourke and Jim McDaid were, in turn, dismissive, angry and indignant.
They'd been on edge before its publication. All week they'd been watching the news from the Moriarty tribunal, where the lordly life and extravagant times of Mr Ahern's mentor, Charles Haughey, were being exposed in fascinating detail.
Here was a Fianna Fail leader and taoiseach whose political ambition had been matched by an appetite for conspicuous consumption and a stunning indifference to who paid for it.
The last thing his erstwhile colleagues wanted was to have the public reminded of his modest successor's political provenance. Government and its allies in the media did what they could to kill the story.
It didn't work.
The passports-for-sale scheme, which allowed wealthy investors to become citizens, was introduced by Mr Haughey in the late 1980s. (It too has now been discredited and abandoned.)
In the early 1990s the passport seeker in question was asked by an Irish businessman turned passport broker to contribute to Fianna Fail. A bank account was opened for the purpose.
The money in the account was transferred to a Fianna Fail account in the names of Albert Reynolds, as leader, and Bertie Ahern, as treasurer.
On Thursday morning Mr Ahern called The Irish Times report "a load of lies" and "a ball of smoke". His tone was aggressive. The groupies were impressed. In the Dail on Thursday afternoon he quibbled with definitions.
Had the money been transferred or diverted? Was the original account an investment account or an investor's? Was the money a contribution to Fianna Fail or a loan (interest-free and not yet repaid, eight years later)?
As he pointed out, there was nothing illegal about the payment of £10,500 to Fianna Fail.
But it had the whiff of transactions in countries where the practice of dashing - to sweeten local officials and politicians - is taken for granted by visiting businessmen.
A friend of mine who directed engineering projects in the Middle East and Nigeria once explained that dashing was part of the job - the way they do things there, he said.
The way we do things here - and, more to the point, the changes that ought to be made in electoral practices, party funding and ethics in public life - is only beginning to be discussed.
But the discussion will get nowhere if the reaction to those who raise questions is, as it was this week, one of suspicion that partisan or unspecified interests are being served.
Not-so-humble backbenchers like Mary Hanafin seemed convinced that the party's critics, egged on by persons unknown, were up to their necks in a plot to destroy the Government.
It was as if opposition was, by definition, subversive and questioning was inherently dangerous. (Plots are unnecessary when a government is bent on self-destruction.)
Fianna Fail is indeed being criticised by the opposition and by some writers and broadcasters with varying degrees of consistency and enthusiasm.
It would be mighty odd, given the news from Dublin Castle, if questions were not asked about events that gave rise to two tribunals, a dozen other inquiries and numerous disclosures in the media.
And, since most - though not all - of the politicians under investigation were leading members of Fianna Fail, it follows that most of the questions are about the party's handling of its own and the State's affairs.
The most serious threat to the Government comes from within. It's raised by the conduct of senior members of Fianna Fail, past and present, and the worry that the patience of the Progressive Democrats may snap at any time.
Younger deputies find it hard to take. They emerged from the Dail this week repeating Mr Ahern's claim that his was a clean government, cleanly led, and hoping for an end to complaints and criticism.
But Mr Ahern's performance in the Dail bore too many reminders of past performances for comfort - beginning with outright denials, ending in prevarication and confusion.
The young deputies should be reminded that much of the information that has been confirmed by tribunals first saw the light, perhaps in different form, in reports which were denied, dismissed or became the subject of libel threats when they first appeared.
Charlie McCreevy took a more cynical view of the media. He suggested on Monday that Bertie Ahern's trouble was that he was too accessible to journalists - too willing to answer questions.
And later, Mr McCreevy spent the best part of an hour discussing his own career and opinions on RTE radio with Vincent Browne.
Someone on Mr Ahern's staff had anticipated the problem during the 1997 election campaign. The party leader swept from end to end of the State on a wave of goodwill. He shook thousands of hands, hugged hundreds of admirers, smiled and was gone.
He didn't answer questions. At most stops, he wasn't asked any. Those who covered the campaign wrote about the handshakes, the smiles and the speed. People Before Politics was the slogan; politics was a dirty word.
He lost the only serious debate he took part in, but by then it didn't matter. He had the weight of Tony O'Reilly behind him and a mind-numbing fog of show business all around.
The Independent group joined in the defence of Mr Ahern yesterday, with a call for responsibility and the need to avoid the damaging effect of repeated allegations.
There was no mention of the Irish Independent's decision to publish Geraldine Kennedy's report on Thursday.
It's good to know that in Middle Abbey Street we have competitors who are not too blind to recognise a good story - and not too proud to lift it.