Martin Cullen survives again, but he may be running out of lives, writes Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent.
In one breath yesterday the Taoiseach said Mr Martin Cullen was in the clear. With the next he announced he was taking away from Ministers the power to appoint their own outside PR consultants without prior approval from his office.
In other words Mr Cullen had done nothing wrong, and no Minister was going to be allowed to do it ever again.
According to the Taoiseach, there is nothing in the report on the awarding of contracts by Mr Cullen's Departments to Ms Monica Leech that suggests the Minister acted inappropriately.
The Government's spin machine was putting out this message in advance. Public opinion was being prepared to accept that the report was a damp squib, and that the issue would blow over almost as the report was published.
Maybe it will. However, Mr Quigley's report gives an excellent account of the kind of practice that makes the public cynical about politicians.
Here is what the report confirms that Mr Cullen did. He suggested to the Office of Public Works that it hire a supporter of his, Ms Monica Leech, to promote the work of his Department in his own constituency.
Nobody else was allowed to tender for this work, and nobody had ever been hired to promote the OPW's activity in any other region.
When he moved to the Department of the Environment he immediately suggested to senior officials that they also hire Ms Leech, this time for communications and public relations advice on national policy issues.
Mr Cullen said the need was urgent, and so normal tendering procedures were not used. Once again, nobody else was allowed compete for the work until Ms Leech had been in situ for six months.
The value of Ms Leech's contract with the Department of the Environment turned out to be higher than the threshold above which the work should have been advertised in the Official Journal of the EU.
It was not so advertised because the Department thought it was conceivable that the total cost could have come in below that EU threshold.
There was no proper recording of work done under the contract. Five firms rather than three should have been invited to tender when a competition was finally held.
The report notes that civil servants may have seen the Minister's championing of Ms Leech as more than a "suggestion", and his actions may have given rise to a perception of impropriety.
The allegation of cronyism, made repeatedly as this controversy continued for the past two months, is given considerable weight by the facts. She is indeed a crony of the Minister, and as a result benefited hugely from being in a position to be suggested and recommended by Mr Cullen.
It should be noted, nevertheless, that in his report Mr Dermot Quigley notes several times that officials praised Ms Leech's work, saying she had made a substantial contribution and had done her job very well.
So no rules were broken. The saga is simply a run-of-the-mill example of the kind of thing that makes the public cynical about politicians.
Mr Cullen, the report says, did not actually instruct either the OPW or the Department of the Environment to hire Ms Leech. That would have been improper, as it would have gone against the standard division of functions between Ministers and secretaries general.
But he "suggested" her to the Department's press officer, a career civil servant. He listed her experience and abilities, he suggested the press officer follow this up, and he held a meeting with Ms Leech and the press officer. But, of course, he did not instruct anybody to hire her. That would not have been right.
Mr Quigley notes that when a minister suggests an official body might hire a person, the way civil servants will perceive this suggestion must be considered.
The unstated implication is that while the Minister did not issue an instruction, perhaps a civil servant would perceive his "suggestion" as tantamount to an instruction.
In the case of her initial OPW contract, Ms Leech was the only consultant asked to submit a tender. This was because it was "urgent". It was "urgent" because the Minister had said it was.
Mr Quigley's report notes that the business need for the appointment and reasons for "urgency" should have been documented, but were not. When she was hired to work for the OPW, the cheaper option of putting her on the staff rather than paying her as a consultant could not be used as the Minister had already appointed his full quota of staff.
Her eight-month part-time contract with the OPW cost €42,903 including VAT and expenses.
In Environment, Mr Cullen turned down a suggestion from officials that she be appointed to his staff. He said she had other clients and therefore would not be available full time.
He also said he had other people in mind for his personal staff and insisted that anyway he was not suggesting that Ms Leech work for him personally but for the Department as a whole. Her 29 months working with the Department of the Environment cost €347,262 including VAT and expenses.
Now the Taoiseach is to set up a unit in his own Department that can approve or veto future proposals from Government Ministers to hire outside public relations and communications advice.
He will tell all Ministers that they must take care when "suggesting a particular person for a contract". Such ministerial "suggestions" must be documented in future. The practice of granting "emergency" contracts on the basis of just one tender will be reviewed.
Martin Cullen suffered political damage as a result of the e-voting debacle last year, and this issue has compounded that.
He must still wait for the decision next week of the Standards in Public Office Commission on whether to conduct a full investigation into the matter. A decision to hold an investigation would renew the pressure on him.