Bertie Ahern can breathe a sigh of relief after the passage of the Nice Treaty, but he still faces a troubled winter, with a no-win Budget looming on the horizon, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Reporter.
In the end, the result was even better for the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, than he had probably dared to hope: not one constituency in the Republic rejected the Nice Treaty. A far cry from last year.
This weekend, he can travel purposefully to the European Union summit in Brussels content that he is not in the spotlight over enlargement into central and eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.
More significantly, Mr Ahern's position as Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fáil has been strengthened as his enemies inside the party - and they are now more than a few - will continue to keep their daggers sheathed.
In unusually foul temper for the past few weeks, according to close associates, Mr Ahern has been given a badly needed chance to regroup, and nobody should doubt his ability to do so.
A defeat yesterday might have sparked a leadership challenge but, even if it had not, it certainly would have set the clock ticking on his political career.
Clearly, Fianna Fáil's €500,000 Yes campaign - although patchy in parts and non-existent in others - played a role in turning around last year's defeat, as the relatively even voting spread indicates.
The decision to recreate Fianna Fáil's "election centre" also helped. It even recovered from the loss of director of elections Mr P.J. Mara with barely a missed beat.
Oddly, the referendum victory may have helped in ways that have nothing to do with the EU. Nerves have been settled after a period where everything seemed to be going pear-shaped. Perhaps, too, the ire of the voters has been drawn.
"I found that if you kept going out on the doors that the anger about finances, McCreevy and everything else started to fade after you got it in the neck a bit," said a surprised Fianna Fáil TD.
In the short-term, there is the small matter of the Budget.
The Exchequer's figures are bad and getting worse. High-spending Ministers have yet to be brought under control by the Department of Finance. Between now and early December, the Government will embark, no doubt, on a quiet set of judicious "leaks", some of which will be right while others, mirabile dictu, will prove to be too pessimistic.
However, Mr Ahern's Parliamentary party is fractious. Last week, a group, led by Cork East TD and former Minister of State Mr Ned O'Keeffe, bitterly complained about the right-wing tenor of the Government's economic policies.
The tenor is not likely to change. If anything, it will get starker. However, it seems beyond belief that Fianna Fáil TDs will go AWOL on the Budget unless senior Ministers propose something completely daft.
Few choices facing Mr McCreevy are palatable: even favoured recommendations from the great and the good would backfire were he to actually try them.
The Special Savings Incentive Account is the classic example. Blatantly unfair, the scheme has been joined by 1.2 million people: "Can you imagine the outcry the minute he touched it?" said one TD.
Meanwhile, Labour and Fine Gael are not likely to benefit much from saying Yes, even though it is a short-odds bet that Fianna Fáil would have exploited the referendum had the roles been reversed.
Fine Gael, however, was given a glorious opportunity to establish the party's new leader, Mr Enda Kenny - still little known by the public at large - as a household brand. Alas, they fluffed it.
Instead, two former Fine Gael taoisigh, Mr John Bruton and, particularly, Dr Garrett FitzGerald emerged as the party's heroes: passionate, committed and willing to get into a scrap.
Labour, on the other hand, is looking inward at its leadership battle. Though it put up posters and canvassed, the party never imposed itself on the campaign.
The lack of credit Labour will get is doubly unfair given that it had no small role in dictating the wording of the referendum, particularly the bar on membership of an EU common defence.
For the Greens, the longer term implications are harder to judge. The MRBI poll findings showed that a significant level of Green supporters were not happy with the party's No stand.
Clearly, an element is also unhappy about the party's perceived alliance with Sinn Féin and the No to Nice campaign led by Mr Justin Barrett, who attended neo-fascist meetings in Italy and Germany.
However, both Sinn Féin and the Greens are the only parties allied to a 40 per cent voting rump.
"That is a lot of voters to be going on with," said Sinn Féin Dublin South Central TD, Mr Aengus Ó Snodaigh.
Despite the result, Nice II, perhaps, marks a defining line in Ireland's attitude towards the EU. The Government has realised that a more questioning attitude towards Brussels sells well on the doorsteps.
Almost regardless of its contents, the next EU referendum, due in 2005, will be harder to sell, particularly since voters will not be susceptible to heartstring-tugging about uniting a divided Europe.