John Bruton and officials who worked for the Fine Gael-led coalition have been accused of attempting to undermine the candidature of Mary McAleese by leaking documents from the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The claims have been made, directly or obliquely, by Bertie Ahern, by Fianna Fail ministers, two of whom spoke last week of treason, and - in less dramatic but equally pointed terms - by the candidate herself.

The claims have been repeated - in some cases exaggerated - by commentators and taken at face value by substantial sections of the electorate, as the latest Irish Times/MRBI Poll showed.

They have not been examined. And when he announced an inquiry into the leaks, the Taoiseach, to the astonishment of many, acknowledged that even the gardai were unlikely to discover what had happened.

Neither this nor Mr Ahern's half-hearted admission that Mr Bruton was not involved has reduced the volume of accusation.

But a preliminary examination of the circumstances shows that the claims against him and his officials are, at best, dubious; they might, with equal or greater justification, be directed at others.

First, there's the political significance of the leaked papers. It would have been negligible if one of those mentioned in them, Mary McAleese, hadn't become noteworthy in her own right. And this didn't happen until she was chosen by Fianna Fail to contest the Presidency on September 17th.

But John Bruton and his colleagues had left office 11 weeks earlier, at the end of June when not much thought was being given to the Presidency.

It was widely (though vaguely) assumed that Albert Reynolds would be the FF nominee. John Hume had yet to appear as a possible agreed candidate.

It would have taken extraordinary prescience to recognise the potential partisan value of papers containing the allegations which have since come to light.

It was after the FG-LabourDemocratic Left government had left office, after the long wait for John Hume to make up his mind, after the opposition to Albert Reynolds had gained momentum, that Mary McAleese began to look like a contender for nomination. In the meantime, the FF-PD Government faced other problems, the most serious of which - by an ironic twist of fate - also affected the Department of Foreign Affairs, now deeply involved in the discussions on the future of the North. Pressure on the minister, Ray Burke, had begun almost as soon as he took office and many doubted whether it would be possible for him to concentrate as he ought on the talks in Belfast.

After weeks of increasingly angry debate about the terms of reference of the Moriarty tribunal on payments to politicians and a second tribunal on planning, he announced his resignation on October 7th.

Colleagues had been aware of his intention for some days, but both they and the Opposition were taken aback by his decision to leave the Dail - so forcing the Government to fight a difficult, maybe impossible, by-election in Dublin North. It seemed a measure of his resentment at both colleagues and critics.

David Andrews took over at Foreign Affairs and immediately set about leading the Government's team in Belfast. But he was less than a week in the Department when the first of the leaks appeared in the Sunday Business Post on October 12th.

Mr Bruton's only reference to this and later leaks has been to criticise them. It was when Mr Adams chose to express a preference for Ms McAleese that he sought a response from Mr Ahern and Mary Harney in the Dail.

The Taoiseach's reaction - first blaming, then absolving the leader of FG; first announcing a Garda inquiry, then admitting that it was unlikely to succeed; continuing to insist that Mr Bruton's officials were responsible - has been far from assured.

It has not prevented ministerial colleagues and some commentators, North and South, from laying about them with a will, sending indiscriminate charges ranging from anti-Northern prejudice to national sabotage far and wide.

It's reasonable to insist that anyone who was in a position to leak the controversial papers should be questioned and held accountable. By all accounts, officials who worked for the tripartite coalition have already been interviewed.

Have Mr Burke and his officials been asked - by the Taoiseach, by erstwhile colleagues in Government or by the gardai - about something which may well have happened on their watch?

Or will the old-style hysteria, which has been deliberately whipped up in the past fortnight, have served its purpose if it prevents serious debate to the end of the Presidential campaign?