AS he enjoys the end of year celebrations surrounded by his family at Ashford Castle, the former Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, will be reminded of most significant event of his year - his libel case against the Sunday Times newspaper.
Unless one or other of them has changed plans, he will have no choice but to remember it, as his adversary, the author of the offending article, Alan Ruddock, booked his end of year holiday at the same hotel.
The case ended with Mr Reynolds's name cleared of the charge of lying to the Dail, but with the derisory damages of one penny, which, because it fell short of the £5,005 lodged in court by the Sunday Times, left him liable for most of the costs of the trial, estimated at about £800,000. It could mean any longings he may have harboured towards the Park will remain unfulfilled.
So, despite his welcome for the jury decision, the outcome was, at best, a pyrrhic victory for Mr Reynolds. It cannot but cause him to reflect on the wisdom of suing a newspaper for even the harshest political criticism and be a sobering lesson to those of his parliamentary colleagues tempted to travel down this path.
Yet many of the factors which led to the jury's costly decision (though one paper reported a juror as saying that they were not aware of the implications for costs of an award of zero damages) lay outside Mr Reynolds's control.
There is no doubt that he stood up well to the seven days' questioning of his behaviour in the days which led to the fall of his government. Lawyers for the Sunday Times failed to get him to concede that he understood the implications of the Duggan case before he made his speech to the Dail on Tuesday. The jury decided he did not.
But he reckoned without one important extraneous factor - the low standing of politicians with the British public and the series of scandals which has tainted all of them, especially those in government, overt the past year of so.
There has been the "arms for Iraq" scandal which showed British cabinet ministers misleading parliament and allowing the export of arms to a regime widely condemned for human rights abuses, and later at war with Britain; sleaze allegations have dogged one Tory politician after another as dubious links with big business were exposed; the ink was scarcely dry on the Conservative Party's "back to basics" policy before a whole raft of its MPs found some unconventional aspects of their personal lives under scrutiny.
The association of politicians with "sleaze" was cleverly exploited by Mr James Price, counsel for the Sunday Times, as he trawled through the saga of the export credit insurance for Iraq (surely a subliminal link with the arms for Iraq scandal in Britain) and the Masri passports affair, although neither of them had a direct bearing on the case. They were relevant as to credibility, he told the court, and the judge admitted the evidence on this basis. Mr Price mentioned the word "sleaze" several times.
The judge, Mr Justice French, went over all this again in his two day, and often confusing, summing up for the jury. Yet he totally omitted any reference to the evidence given by Mr Ruddock, especially that given under cross examination by counsel for Mr Reynolds, Lord Gareth Williams.
This evidence gave journalists little reason to feel proud. Ruddock admitted he had watched the Dail proceedings in a pub; that he had no notes on which the article was based; that he had not spoken to, or seriously attempted to speak to, anyone on behalf of Fianna Fail before writing the article; that his only political source was clearly partisan - Dick Spring's adviser, Fergus Finlay - and that he had chosen to ignore the contents of an article commissioned by him, and edited by him, on the same subject, a thoroughly researched account of the events by Vincent Browne, which differed significantly from his.
Irish journalists covering the libel trial were aghast as they listened to his evidence and felt that this was a turning point in favour of Mr Reynolds. In his final address - to the jury, Lord Williams awarded Mr Ruddock "zero out of eight" for journalistic standards.
But that took place eight days before the jury retired to consider its verdict and must have been well in the back of jurors' minds. Judge French, while giving them a full version of Mr Price's final remarks, only gave Lord Williams's the most cursory attention, and left out the bits that were most damaging to the Sunday Times.
This was undoubtedly in the minds of Mr Reynolds's legal team when they said they were looking at grounds for appeal. One might have thought the former Taoiseach has had enough. Not a bit of it! He's going to appeal watch this space!