Tribunal sketch/Miriam Lord:Throughout this sorry saga, there is one constant. It has always been the elephant in the room that nobody really wants to recognise, because it is too embarrassing and far too private. Nobody wants to intrude.
Yet, on bar stools and around dinner tables the length and breadth of this country, it is the issue that people bring up again and again.
It was Bertie Ahern, who, with a heavy heart and a tear in his eye, first led this lumbering beast into the spotlight. And there, he abandoned it, to nobody's advantage except, perhaps, his own.
Of course we were always aware of the beast's presence - far too big to ignore. But we are decent people and we avert our eyes. It was one of the reasons the Opposition pulled back from an all-out attack when the story of Bertie's strange financial history broke in September 2006.
Call it the Dobson Defence. How can we forget that evening on the news, when a proud Taoiseach stifled his emotions and revealed in painful detail to Bryan Dobson the circumstances surrounding the break-up of his marriage? He didn't want his private affairs made public, and as he spoke, his inner turmoil was apparent.
And the viewing public, the compassionate man and woman in the street, looked beyond headlines and political scalps, recognising the difficulties that can face a man when his relationship falls apart and he must leave the family home.
The Dobson Defence: his money problems were all to do with separating from his wife. Who amongst us doesn't know of someone with a similar story to tell? There were many who listened to him tell his story and thought: "I am that soldier." It could never be raised in public, and certainly would never be broached in public by Bertie Ahern, but we are all men and women of the world. So people nod knowingly and whisper to each other about a fella wanting to salt a few bob away for himself, away from the missus and her lawyers.
Not that we are suggesting for one moment that this is what Bertie Ahern was doing when he suddenly developed an aversion to banking his money, running his entire life on a cash-only basis. But a person can't help thinking, and you know yourself . . . These things happen, even to an outwardly successful and undeniably capable man like Bertie.
Yesterday in Dublin Castle, the Dobson Defence loomed large again. As tribunal lawyer Des O'Neill repeatedly pressed the Taoiseach about his bizarre approach to his personal finances back in the early 1990s, Bertie always fell back on the same explanation.
"Because I was separated."
"That's the way I lived."
His demeanour in the witness box was far different to how it was three months ago, when he suffered a torrid time in the face of Des O'Neill's forensic examination. Back then, there were times when he seemed a beaten man, a lonely, almost cowed figure.
But Bertie was angry yesterday and he fought all the way. He sat hunched, arms folded across his chest, glowering at the senior counsel.
The Taoiseach was affronted by his questions, the tone of them and their content.
Bertie had been going through a lengthy separation. Separation - get it? Did he have to spell it out? At any moment, one expected him to repeat the exasperated line he barked at Eamon Gilmore recently in the Dáil. "Are ya deaf or stupid?"
But he didn't. He didn't have to - his snippy remarks and seething resentment said it for him.
If his predicament was due to his personal problems at the time, some of us would have joined him in telling Des O'Neill, as Bertie did, that how he disbursed his money was "none of your damn business!"
But too much has been heard in evidence thus far, and too many contradictions thrown up, to end the matter there. If Deathly Des ever sounds sincere, it is when he tells Ahern with feeling that he has no interest whatsoever in prying into this private arrangements.
The fact that the tribunal continues to question him, and with stunning determination, is very telling.
Bertie told the inquiry he began using banks again to lodge money and open accounts when the seven-year legal process pertaining to his marital situation was finished.
His cash-only existence came to an end. "I started phasing that out from the time my separation was over."
It was hard not to wince when highly personal details of Bertie Ahern's private life were aired in the tribunal chamber. How he put this amount of money by to pay for his daughters' education. How that amount was earmarked to pay legal fees. How a different figure was used to pay off his wife's car loan.
When the paltry sum concerning the car loan was mentioned, one of the Taoiseach's staff shook her head in disbelief, a look of disgust on her face. Her expression spoke volumes. It said: how on earth can they be doing this to him?
On one level, the daftness of his situation when he was minister for finance made for highly entertaining listening. Stories of his staff running to the bank to cash his substantial pay checks and leaving the bundles of cash on his desk were extraordinary.
Sometimes, Bertie said, he might stuff it into a drawer.
He was never worried about any of the money going walkies - although as he rarely counted it, it's hard to know if he would have been able to tell.
"I've worked in government offices since 1982 and nobody ever took anything," he said.
But while his story, on the face of it, seemed plausible in a weird sort of way, questions remained.
So his life was chaotic, so what? The difficulty is, and it is one the tribunal is having a problem squaring, that his life was chaotically comfortable. He may have been going through a rough time personally, but he also had money coming out of his ears. Money not consistent with his salary, and that is the only reason he is before the Mahon tribunal now.
His description of living above the shop in Fianna Fáil's St Luke's constituency office was equally entertaining. The top floor apartment was used as extra meeting space by Fianna Fáil councillors and senators and constituency workers.
"The only thing I could control was the bedroom." Cue visions of poor Bertie, minister for finance, eating his toast in his pyjamas of a morning and trying to read the papers, while sundry grassroots discussed party business around him.
Matters got very complicated, and heated, in the afternoon. Bertie's lawyer railed against what he saw as a clear "breach of the Taoiseach's constitutional rights." The man himself was far more direct. When O'Neill advanced a hypothesis of his own to explain some convoluted bank arrangements entered into by Ahern - a counterpoint to the witness's explanation - the Taoiseach exploded.
His theory was "unbelievable." Not just that, but the tribunal was "trying to set me up, or stitch me up." If we didn't know this was a high-stakes game, we did now.
Much now rests on the outcome of today's evidence. One thing is for sure though now: If the tribunal has to shoot the elephant in the room, it will.
As of yet, it is still unclear if it has cause to do it.