Two weeks ago Liz O'Donnell said the Government had a "doom-laden and ad-hoc policy" on dealing with asylum-seekers. "We in Government will insist that this administrative shambles is brought to an end," she said in an interview published in the Sunday Business Post on November 14th.

"What is going on is a disgrace. The issue must be addressed through good, joined-up governance. It requires specific co-ordinated action by positively focused civil servants and ministers. To date this has not happened."

Ten days later in the Dail, Ms O'Donnell struck a very different tone. She praised the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, for his efforts and said she was "confident that an energetic and focused effort by the relevant ministers, co-ordinated by the Taoiseach, will effectively deal with this issue".

On November 14th she had suggested some of those dealing with the issue had "the wrong credo or mind-set". The Department of Justice's policies were "unplanned, unregulated and unsuccessful".

This week she said her criticisms were never personalised against any group of workers, and "I fully accept that all my ministerial colleagues are well motivated in dealing with this issue."

Ms O'Donnell insists she was not forced, coerced or pressurised to make her highly conciliatory speech on Wednesday evening. A spokesman for Ms O'Donnell said after her speech: "There was no instruction to her, implicitly or explicitly." She had made her decision and written her speech without pressure from others, he said.

The spokesman specifically denied the various rumours circulating in Leinster House, including one that former PD leader Desmond O'Malley had spoken to Ms O'Donnell at length to persuade her to change tack. He said Mr O'Malley was out of the State, and Ms O'Donnell had not spoken to him. He denied a report that she had been "carpeted" by the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, and other more far-fetched explanations.

Ms O'Donnell told the Government Chief Whip's office she wanted to speak in the debate on Tuesday, the day before the vote on the motion of no confidence in the Minister for Justice. The request was passed, in accordance with normal practice, to the private office of the relevant minister, in this case Mr O'Donoghue.

Thirty minutes' speaking time was available to the Government, of which six minutes was allocated to Minister of State Mr Frank Fahey to close the debate. The remaining 24 minutes was being divided among eight speakers, including three Cabinet Ministers. On Wednesday morning Ms O'Donnell was told she was getting the fourth of the eight three-minute slots.

However, Ms O'Donnell had been offered another public platform in advance of her Dail slot. As Ms Harney sat in the Dail chamber in solidarity with Mr O'Donoghue on Tuesday night, Ms O'Donnell was on her way to RTE to appear on Prime Time. There, under robust questioning from presenter Brian Farrell, she stood by her claim that Government policy was "a shambles", and did so again to The Irish Times later that evening. She appeared to claim credit for changing the Government's approach to the issue, and said some Fianna Fail backbenchers had made "intolerant" and "xenophobic" comments on the matter.

At the Fianna Fail parliamentary party meeting in Leinster House the next morning, many deputies were furious about her performance. As the Government and Mr O'Donoghue in particular were striving to adopt a new tone on the immigration issue and outlining new measures they would adopt, Ms O'Donnell had sought to score points off them again, they believed, rather than acknowledge the changes.

The mild-mannered parliamentary party chairman, Dr Rory O'Hanlon, opened by suggesting that deputies should be careful about making public pronouncements on contentious issues, and advising them to contact the party press office before doing so. This prompted TDs Mr Liam Aylward and Mr Conor Lenihan to interject, saying the warning should be applied to ministers such as Ms O'Donnell who had stirred up the controversy.

The Taoiseach then said a number of Fianna Fail deputies had made unhelpful contributions as well, and he would be talking to Ms Harney about the interventions from within both parties on the matter. The meeting moved on to discuss the Budget.

At the same time, the PDs were gathering in their party rooms across the road in Kildare House. According to a spokesman for Ms O'Donnell she had already decided in the morning that her speech that night would be conciliatory in tone. "She was taken aback at the tone of the commentary on her Prime Time interview the previous night, and decided to seek in her speech to de-escalate tensions in the Government."

Recognition of the need to de-escalate tension was strongly shared at the PD meeting. Ms Harney made some points in defence of Mr O'Donoghue's handling of the matter, saying he had wanted to appoint full-time staff to alleviate the queues at the refugee centre in Dublin's Lower Mount Street, but he had not been given the resources by the Government. She is also understood to have referred to the last-minute negotiations on next Wednesday's Budget, during which the PDs are seeking to win concessions on certain issues, notably the size of the increase in the old age pension. The message was that this row over immigration should now be defused.

Ms O'Donnell made it clear she would be making a conciliatory speech that evening. There was some dissatisfaction that she would be confined to three minutes, but it could not be changed.

Ms O'Donnell wrote her speech that afternoon, receiving a fax from the Department of Justice warning her - and the other eight Government speakers - to stick rigidly to the time allotted. In late afternoon she sent the finished speech to the Government Information Service to be copied and distributed to the press. She delivered it in the Dail shortly after 8 p.m., racing through it in a monotone to ensure she got it all on to the Dail record in her allotted three minutes.

Ms O'Donnell did not tell her party she was going to give her Sunday Business Post interview, nor did she tell it in advance how unapologetic she was going to be on Prime Time last Tuesday. However, party sources say they are happy with the outcome of the two-week controversy. The PDs' independent profile has been raised and the tone of the debate on immigration and asylum has been changed.

But that debate is still only beginning.