In the discussion about the question-marks which have appeared over the head of Mr Desmond O'Malley, it has been overlooked that there is at least one charge against him which can now be struck out. This is the accusation that, in leading the PDs into government under Charles Haughey in 1989, he behaved irresponsibly in that he was pre pared to share power with a man he had described as "unfit" to hold office.
That assessment of Mr Haughey had been delivered most memorably by Mr O'Malley following his own expulsion from Fianna Fail in 1985, when he said in a radio interview that Mr Haughey's role in the Arms Crisis of 1970 had rendered him unfit for public power.
In 1989, a number of people with long memories had the bad manners to remind Mr O'Malley of his previous emphatic position. A degree of muttering was engaged in along the lines that every party has its price and the Party of Principle the highest price of all.
Although Mr O'Malley declined to be baited, the issue clouded the Progressive Democrats' candidacy for political canonisation on the basis of having (once again) put the national interest before their own otherwise insatiable thirst for high principle. Of course, to make it look good they had to drive a hard bargain, demanding Mercs and perks in a manner as to put the Labour Party to shame.
We gasped in admiration at how Mr O'Malley and his colleagues were willing to grub around the place in their ministerial cars because the national interest required them to humble themselves in this disagreeable way.
But now, thank Heaven, it transpires that no major conscience-wrestling was required, and one feels enormously relieved on Mr O'Malley's account that no fundamental compromise of his rooted principles was necessary.
NOW the possibility arises that Mr O'Malley did not then regard his previous evaluation of Mr Haughey as prohibiting the support of a Haughey-led government because he knew much more about what occurred in 1970 than almost anyone else.
This inside knowledge, perhaps, led him to the mature conclusion that what he had said in 1985 was wrong, a verdict served up at the time for expedient purposes and garnished with a considerable helping of chagrin.
Deep down, perhaps, Mr O'Malley always believed that either Mr Haughey was not at all rendered unfit for public office by the events of 1970, or at least no more so than others, including perhaps Mr O'Malley himself.
If so, it was logical that, if he was himself prepared to take up office, there could be no good reason for objecting to Mr Haughey doing so, and therefore no reason not to enter government in coalition with his former abomination. Who says ethics is a complex subject?
Mr O'Malley is fortunate in that whenever he is obliged to consider matters relating to the public good, a solution presents itself which, while capable of being presented as in the national interest, also happens to be in the best interests of Mr O'Malley.
He has made much of the fact that his actions in 1970 were the outcome of a careful weighing-up of the national interest: he was defending the State and seeking to prevent a slide into civil war.
That he was also ensuring the preservation within Fianna Fail of the compromise leadership arrangement, which ensured it would be dominated by second-raters for decades, was a collateral aspect rather than the primary purpose or consequence of his decisions.
In July 1989, following the successful coalition negotiations between the PDs and Fianna Fail, Mr O'Malley got to his feet in Dail Eireann and said: "I want to acknowledge the courage and skill exhibited, particularly by Deputy Haughey in recent weeks, courage and skill which I know he possesses in abundance, and which has been utilised in the national interest during this time."
Once again, in pursuing the national interest, Mr O'Malley managed to emerge with the outcome most congenial to himself. I feel sure it was a complete fluke of history that that decision brought him into open conflict with the logic of decisions and rhetoric of the past.
This man who had once characterised Mr Haughey holding office as contrary to the public interest was now suggesting that it was in accordance with the public interest that Mr Haughey hold the second-highest office in the land - provided, of course, that Mr O'Malley and his colleagues were at hand to see that everything occurred in accordance with . . . the national interest.
Few objected: once someone has established himself as placing national interest above other considerations, it seems churlish to question his right to decide where that interest resides.
It may well be that this curious synchronicity between Mr O'Malley's and the nation's interests is a coincidence. Another possibility is that it is a symptom of a condition disproportionately afflicting people from the mid-west - the tendency to perceive personal physiological responses as indicators of national mood. Another victim was Eamon de Valera, who famously imagined that his heart acted as a barometer of public opinion.
Perhaps Mr Desmond O'Malley is indeed, as his followers have often suggested, the rightful successor to Mr de Valera?