The Tánaiste and the Sunday Independent journalist shook hands in a corridor after the settlement was announced, but that was where cordiality ended, writes Frank McNally
No sooner had Ms Harney told reporters that her winnings, less legal costs, would go to charity, than Independent Newspapers responded with a statement from which charity was conspicuously missing. The libel action had been settled on an "economic basis", the statement said, and the payment was "a good deal less" than Ms Harney's likely legal bill.
It was a rancorous twist to the 11th-hour compromise. In fact, negotiations had continued well past 11 a.m., the time the jury was asked to return to the courtroom after electing a foreman. Eleven came and went, and 11.15 a.m. too, and still the two sides tick-tacked. Experienced legal observers agreed the case would be settled.
Then Ms Harney entered the court accompanied by her husband Brian Geoghegan, and experienced legal observers changed their minds. The case was going ahead. Kevin Feeney and Paul Gallagher, among the Law Library's best-known heavyweights, were getting ready for combat, like sumo wrestlers slapping their thighs.
Five minutes later, they left the ring again, and the jury was once more out - literally and figuratively - on whether the case would proceed. Sure enough, when they returned, the lawyers were brandishing copies of a handwritten paragraph on a foolscap page: the piece of paper that meant peace in our time.
It was not so much a day in court as an hour, and the jury did not have even that. The Sunday Independent's apology - to the effect that a front-page story in January 2001 was never meant to suggest the Tánaiste had received corrupt payments - was read out and the jurors were dismissed. Outside, Ms Harney exchanged greetings and a handshake with the author of the offending article, Jody Corcoran.
But the settlement between the sides proved nearly as tortured as the negotiations.
The Tánaiste welcomed the "unreserved apology" for what she called an "extraordinarily damaging" article. When her legal costs were paid, she added, the rest of the money would go to a charity she would not be naming until she first contacted it herself.
Independent Newspapers, however, were openly scornful of suggestions that the settlement allowed her any room for altruism. On the contrary, spokesmen said, it would not even pay her legal bill. A source added that the apology would be on page 3 of Sunday's editions, not page 1, as first demanded.