With a good election under his belt, it was "next business" as far as Bertie Ahern was concerned.

The opposition parties were clamouring for a confession of "guilt by association" or arising from a failure to supervise or check Mr Paddy Duffy's behaviour, but the Taoiseach gave them the back of his hand.

As soon as he became fully aware of the situation, Mr Ahern declared, he had taken action - or, more accurately, Mr Duffy had resigned.

There had been, the Taoiseach admitted, "unfortunate mistakes, misunderstandings and errors of judgement" - but they were all on Mr Duffy's side, and there had been no improper influence used on behalf of NTL.

As John Bruton and Brendan Howlin attempted to pin responsibility for the supervision and control of his personal staff on him, the Teflon Taoiseach slipped away. He didn't know anything definitively until it was too late, but when he found out, necessary steps were taken.

The background is easily stated. In January of 1998, the Taoiseach met the managing director of NTL - the company which eventually bought Cablelink from the State for £535 million - in Belfast and was advised of the company's plans to establish a presence in Ireland.

In early April, there was follow-up contact with the Taoiseach's Office by NTL when inquiries about the sale of Cablelink were raised. A week later, Dillon Consultants wrote directly to Mr Duffy on behalf of NTL, seeking audience with the Government in connection with its investment and development plans North and South of the Border.

A meeting with the Taoiseach and his officials was arranged for May 21st. By June, Mr Duffy had so impressed Dillon Consultants that he was being offered a place in the sun in the private sector. There was some further involvement and negotiation between the parties before a deal was done.

On December 9th, Mr Duffy became a director of Dillon Consultants with a 5 per cent stake in the company and he was due to start work in January. A week later, he changed his mind and returned the shareholding, believing - according to the Taoiseach - that this negated his directorship of the company.

The company took a different view, however. Last February, Mr Duffy met Dillons and APCO - a large international public affairs consultancy - in London to discuss his future role in a new partnership between the firms.

The parachutist was preparing a careful leave-taking, but he had not registered any commercial interest under the Ethics in Public Office Act - and the net was closing.

The bidding tactics of NTL in its offer for Cablelink brought out the commercial knives and put the spotlight firmly on him. In April, Alan Dukes was alerted about an NTL inside track to the Taoiseach's Department through Dillons and Mr Duffy.

According to Mr Ahern, his special adviser offered him a denial when challenged about Mr Dukes's information but said he was considering taking up with Dillons after leaving his job as special adviser.

There was no holding back with Mary O'Rourke. He told the Minister with responsibility for the sale of Cablelink "personally and trenchantly that he had no connection with Dillons or NTL". The sale went through on May 26th.

It took The Irish Times to bring the truth home to the Taoiseach.

When this newspaper reported Mr Duffy's involvement with Dillons in early June it created - as the Taoiseach so delicately put it - "the impression that Mr Duffy had not been open about previous contacts, future plans and contractual arrangements and that he had placed the Minister in a false and invidious position". That, Mr Ahern said, "was the most serious aspect of the case".

It was indeed. Ms O'Rourke does not like being played for a patsy by anyone. Mr Duffy had to go, and he went early and as gracefully as the circumstances allowed.

In the Dail yesterday, the Taoiseach mused about links between the public and the private sector and concluded that, at a time when our ethics legislation was still developing, the whole area needed deeper reflection and debate.

He had lost a valued colleague. There had been unfortunate mistakes, misunderstandings and errors of judgment, but Mr Duffy had paid heavily for them. A 21-page carefully crafted script offered Mr Duffy a fool's pardon and, in the process, provided the longest Dail reply to a specific subject in many years.

As for himself, the Taoiseach had nothing to account for.

While the opposition parties questioned his extraordinary lack of knowledge about Mr Duffy's career intentions throughout 1998, they got nowhere.

At the end of it all, Mr Ahern was free and clear and bidding for the moral high ground. Ethics legislation was still in its infancy, he observed, before concluding: "There may be cautionary lessons which have an application that go far beyond the individual concerned."