What a breathtaking exposition of the culture of Fianna Fáil we have witnessed in recent days. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern received some €50,000 in payments from 12 businessmen friends while he was minister for finance in 1993 and 1994. The purpose to which they were put is his own business. The whip-around, we were led to believe, was mostly in cash.
It subsequently turns out that the biggest of those payments - €5,000 - was drawn on a company cheque from NCB. And to cap it all, Mr Ahern, acting as the private man rather than the holder of the third-highest office in government, is the recipient of another whip-around - £8,000 sterling - from friends in Manchester for being the guest speaker at a function or, maybe, not speaking at all.
And current Minister for Finance Brian Cowen , who is purported to be Mr Ahern's chosen successor, says that it is "not incorrect". What beggars belief is that senior ministers like Mr Cowen, Dermot Ahern, Mary Hanafin, Seamus Brennan and Micheál Martin see nothing wrong in this whole episode at all. The incredulity experienced by the public at large that Fianna Fáil has learned nothing from the past 10 years of tribunals is palpable. The country is convulsed by the revelations.
The Taoiseach has not just let himself down, compromised the highest political office in the land, but those people outside of Fianna Fáil who had come to believe in him. He has been a good Taoiseach over the last nine years; warts and all, he has won the affection of the public; he has done significant service for this State in negotiating the Belfast Agreement, social partnership between employers and trade unions, the development of the economy and, for the first time in our history, the achievement of full employment. He has served this State well at home and abroad. Nobody wants to have his head on a plate.
But the public at large, especially those loyal Fianna Fáil people who have had to swallow more than they deserve in recent years, want accountability and standards in public life. Mr Ahern is a million miles away from where they - never mind the Progressive Democrats - want their leader to be. In an article in an English newspaper, the News of the World, yesterday, the Taoiseach wrote: "I am happy to answer them [the Opposition and the PDs, presumably] because I have done nothing wrong. In the law, in ethics and in relation to tax".
What Mr Ahern did, as minister for finance, is wrong. It may not have been outside the law at the time but it is morally wrong and ethically wrong. There is an important principle involved. There can be no separation between the private and the public actions of an individual when one is a public office-holder. There can be no whip-arounds from businessmen to sustain a personal lifestyle. And it is the failure of the Taoiseach, his Ministers and his advisers to grasp this principle that could lead to his downfall tomorrow. What he did was wrong and he must say so. An apology is not enough.