Tánaiste Michael McDowell told Taoiseach Bertie Ahern that "We've survived it" following the end of yesterday's press conference to announce the end to differences over Mr Ahern's personal finances.
The remark was made as the two men turned away from microphones at the end of a hastily called press conference in Government Buildings in Dublin.
Refusing to take more than four questions, Mr Ahern stood aside while those allowed were directed at Mr McDowell, whose handling of the crisis has been sharply criticised.
Asked if he was certain that Mr Ahern has now given him all necessary information, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform said: "I am absolutely satisfied that the Taoiseach has fairly and honestly dealt with me in relation to these matters. Whereas I don't know what lurks in the long grass for any of us - the Taoiseach doesn't know what lurks in the long grass for me - I can say this, that I believe that the great majority of the Irish people believe that this Government should continue, that the Taoiseach should continue being Taoiseach and I should continue being Tánaiste."
However, he rejected criticisms last week of the Progressive Democrats' 36-hour silence, which created fears that the Government was on the verge of collapse.
"We weren't in a sulk. We just decided at that point that words were not needed. What was needed was action," he said.
The PDs, said Mr McDowell, are "not the watchdogs of anybody else", but "a separate party with our own standards" that had asked voters for a mandate to go into government.
"We pointed out to the Irish people that a two-party government is better than single-party government. I regard it as odd that some commentators have come up with a cynical view that the people would take the view that the commitment to deliver on 'single-party government, no thanks' is to create a single-party government.
"That is a nonsense, and it is childish. The Progressive Democrats, like everybody else involved in this, believes in accountability and believes in delivering decent standards in Irish political life."
The PDs, he said, do not suffer "from altitude sickness on the moral high ground", but believe in "basic, simple standards in government".
Once the ethics laws are changed, politicians will be required to make confidential disclosures to the Standards in Public Office Commission if they accept gifts from friends.
"There are good reasons why people in public office will receive help from their friends in difficult circumstances," he told the press conference.
"Where that happens there will be a process of scrutiny and that it doesn't happen in circumstances where it doesn't add up to a proper vindication of standards," he said.
He refused to accept he had acted wrongly in his decision last year to release confidential Department of Justice files that indicated journalist Frank Connolly had travelled to Colombia.
"Under the Official Secrets Act it is up to a Minister to decide when records in his or her possession should be put into the public domain. I stand by every act that I took in relation to the CPI and Frank Connolly. It was a proper discharge of my functions as Minister for Justice with responsibility for the security of this country. It was in every way proper.
"It would, in my view, have been a dereliction of duty not to put that material into the public domain. I stood over every word and every action I took in Dáil Éireann and I believe that I acted entirely properly, and I believe that the Irish people would have been grossly deceived if I had kept that material secret," he said.
He had immediately revealed himself as the source for the information, he said. "I don't hide behind privilege or convention. If I do something which I believe is necessary in the public interest, I say so and stand over it. I say to you I have never seen, and I repeat it now, a convincing denial of the truth of what I have said. Journalism is about openness and accountability.
"I am still waiting for anybody to prove that anything I said was wrong, and I believe that the significance of what I put on the record there is manifest for everyone to see. Journalists don't go under false passports with senior members of a paramilitary organisation to visit other members of a paramilitary organisation in the jungles of Colombia," he said.
