Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Tánaiste Michael McDowell will agree a text this morning for Mr Ahern's Dáil explanation of payments he received from businessmen in 1993 and 1994, write Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent, and Barry Roche, Southern Correspondent.
The two men were in frequent contact throughout yesterday and work on the brief statement was essentially completed last night after Mr Ahern returned from a Tipperary North constituency visit.
They will meet as usual in advance of this morning's Cabinet meeting when Mr Ahern is also expected to give Ministers a flavour of his statement.
Mr Ahern will make a five-minute statement in the Dáil followed by statements of similar length from the leaders of Fine Gael, Labour, the Green Party, and Sinn Féin, and Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins on behalf of the Independents Group. The Taoiseach will then have five minutes to respond.
The debate will continue during the usual 21 minutes of Leaders' Questions and a further 20 minutes conceded by the Government yesterday.
However, Opposition whips have warned the Government Chief Whip, Tom Kitt, that the Dáil schedule is unacceptable and that they will press today for further time.
So far, there are no signals from Fianna Fáil that Mr Ahern is prepared to issue any significant expression of apology for accepting the money. The PD leader is unlikely to press the point too hard.
Speaking in Belfast, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, echoed Tánaiste Michael McDowell's words on Saturday, urging everyone to display "a sense of proportion".
"Are you going to turn around and throw away nearly 10 years of extremely good government on the basis of something that happened 13 years ago when the guidelines weren't as tight as perhaps they should have been?" Mr Dermot Ahern said.
The Opposition will press for full details about Mr Ahern's acceptance from friends of £22,500 in 1993 and £16,500 in 1994, and a further stg£8,000 from Manchester-based businessmen in 1994.
Fine Gael seems likely to demand explanations from Mr Ahern about how he managed to save £50,000 between 1986 and 1993 when he has said he did not have a bank account in his name from 1987 to 1993.
Fine Gael and Labour last night were organising a joint approach to today's debate to ensure that none of the limited time offered by the Government is wasted.
But in a signal that the crisis for the Government parties may be nearly over, Mr McDowell yesterday repeatedly and pointedly praised Mr Ahern's handling of the European Constitution Treaty negotiations, describing him as "statesmanlike".
Rejecting Opposition charges that he and Mr Ahern have reached "a secret deal", Mr McDowell said public accountability occurred in the Dáil, and he was confident that Mr Ahern would meet that standard.
"That is where all these matters will be thrashed out: not with some secret deal, and some secret accountability," Mr McDowell told the Association of European Journalists.
Transport Minister Martin Cullen became the latest FF Minister to insist that Mr Ahern had done nothing wrong by accepting any of the three payments, emphasising that ethical standards had strengthened since 1993.
"It was a different time, he did absolutely nothing wrong, he broke no law, he broke no code of ethics and it's as simple as that."
Progressive Democrats' Minister of State Tom Parlon said he did not expect "any surprises" in the Dáil.
Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte said the PDs had "sold themselves to the Irish public as the moral watchdogs of Government conduct".
However he said they had "collapsed and lost their purpose" when tested in battle.