The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, shifted his ground when he gave evidence yesterday to the Mahon tribunal inquiring into corruption in the planning process. It was an unexpected development and, as a result, the version of events given by property developer, Mr Tom Gilmartin, about a meeting in 1989 with Fianna Fáil ministers, the difficulties he experienced in progressing his projects in Dublin, and the demands made on him for money, has gained in credibility.
Mr Ahern was subjected to the kind of rigorous cross-examination that Dáil procedures do not permit and, at one point, he was clearly shaken and annoyed. His concession that a meeting of the kind described by Mr Gilmartin and recently confirmed by former minister, Mrs Mary O'Rourke, could have taken place, caused surprise. But he held to his formal statement that he had no recollection of the meeting and that it was his firm belief he had not attended such a meeting.
To complicate matters, the Taoiseach said he would not regard the gathering described by Mr Gilmartin or Mrs O'Rourke as a meeting because such informal ministerial events, in between Dáil business, took place on a regular basis.
That kind of semantic juggling is not what is expected of a Taoiseach. Mr Ahern may be labouring under the long shadow of former taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey, who became a kept man of Irish business and used Fianna Fáil funds for his personal use, but greater clarity in his evidence would have been refreshing.
Time and again, Mr Ahern's memory failed him. His knowledge of the crucial Quarryvale development, where Mr Liam Lawlor and George Redmond were alleged to be demanding money from Mr Gilmartin, was vestigial. He could not remember Mr Gilmartin telling him about the cash demands, when the developer telephoned him looking for help. And he could not remember being told about a £50,000 donation paid to Mr Padraig Flynn. In fact, Mr Ahern had only remembered a single contact with Mr Gilmartin, when originally questioned by the media, before his memory was jogged by his diaries and by two party colleagues.
Mr Gilmartin told a senior official within the party in 1990 about the £50,000 payment to Mr Flynn. The official did nothing about it until Mr Haughey was removed as party leader. The new leader, Mr Albert Reynolds, was said to have been told in 1993. But he disputes this. Mr Ahern says he did not learn about it until it became public knowledge in 1998, when Mr Flynn was Ireland's Commissioner in Brussels.
There would appear to have been insufficient appetite to investigate and root out sleaze and corruption within Fianna Fáil in those years. And if the broad definition of "collusion" used by Judge Peter Cory in his recent investigations into paramilitary murders was applied, some politicians would stand accused of not doing enough to prevent breaches of the law.