Bertie Ahern's authority as leader and Taoiseach and the links between political standards and party funding are bound to be two of the critical issues in the next general election.
This week Ahern's authority, shaken by the impact of Michael Noonan's arrival, has been seriously undermined by his mishandling of the O'Keeffe affair. And Fianna Fail is under increasing pressure from Labour on corporate funding and electoral spending.
To make matters worse, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain underlines the importance of food safety - Ned O'Keeffe was responsible for food - and the resumed hearings of the Flood tribunal remind us of tangled webs where business and politics conspire.
The fact that O'Keeffe was responsible for food while meat and bonemeal was mild under special licence by a family firm and fed to animals on a family farm must have seemed to outsiders a bit Irish - though if they'd dared say so we'd have put on our green jerseys and complained.
The fact that he didn't acknowledge his interests and connections when he spoke for the Government in a Dail debate on a Labour motion on BSE in November was indisputable. Yet for almost three months he sat it out. And so did the Taoiseach.
In Ahern's case it was par for the course. Remember how he made John Ellis, who was up to his neck in trouble with farmers, chairman of an Oireachtas committee on agriculture? How Liam Lawlor, also up to his neck in trouble, became Fianna Fail's authority on Oireachtas members' interests?
Northern Ireland and European affairs were bound to be vital interests at the turn of the century. In 1997 Ahern entrusted them to Ray Burke, about whom questions were raised before, during and after his appointment. Remember how in his case, as in Lawlor's, Ellis's and Denis Foley's, Ahern refused to budge until he had no option?
What made O'Keeffe's case different was that, even when the junior minister had resigned, Ahern, looking more confused than usual, refused to tell the Dail exactly what had happened before or after the resignation.
Pat Rabbitte and others asked whether O'Keeffe had got his marching orders from an official (a political assassin, as Rabbitte said). Or whether he'd been offered a transfer (as gardai sometimes were, when they found ministers in pubs after hours). O'Keeffe accused Ahern of reneging on a deal: what deal?
If Ahern had faced O'Keeffe and sacked him - even after a delay of two months or more - and if he had then come to the Dail and explained why such conflicts of interest could not be tolerated, his exercise of authority would have been acknowledged all round.
As it is, the O'Keeffe affair will go down as yet another display of the weakness and indecision which now looks like marking the Government's approach to party funding and electoral spending.
Labour has led the campaign to prohibit corporate funding and limit spending on elections. Noonan joined in as soon as he became leader: many saw that as the first evidence of Fine Gael's move to the left and the likelihood of a contest between centre-right and centre-left options in the election.
DEBATES between centre-right and centre-left have been opened on several fronts. Charlie McCreevy, predictably, has been the first to climb off the Fianna Fail fence with an acknowledgement that the FF-Progressive Democrat coalition is, indeed, a centre-right administration. He made the admission in conversation with Olivia O'Leary on RTE One, but climbed back on to the fence shortly afterwards with the new FF line that it's possible to be Thatcherite on economics and social democratic on social affairs.
It's back to the old populist appeal - FF can represent all interests - linked to the notion that, as McCreevy says: "Governments can't bring everybody up to the same levels - it just happens." This is magic. The real arguments will be about health, housing and education and one of the first clear signs of where parties stand will be provided by their attitudes to corporate donations.
The debate about donations is essentially an argument about maintaining the alliance between business and politics which enables the rich to buy power over the heads of citizens who have only their votes to pledge. We've seen how it works again and again in the tribunals where we learn why some of the richest in the country might have chosen to come to the aid of some of the State's most powerful office-holders. The claim that a ban on corporate contributions would somehow infringe the constitutional rights of citizens is a claim that should be challenged.
There's another claim that needs to be challenged. It's the view that action taken by the Equality Authority against Ryanair - because of discrimination in an advertisement published here - amounts to an attack on free speech. I don't believe it does. And I'm certain the cause of free speech is not served by heaping abuse on the chairman of the authority, Niall Crowley, as happened on Today FM's The Last Word. Any suggestion of the need for
equality - any attempt to make this lopsided society fairer - brings out the hysterical worst in some of our colleagues.
They seem to think they speak for the rest of us when they refer to people like Niall Crowley as "f***ers like you" and accuse them of "creeping fascism".
All they manage to do is to make a show of themselves.
dwalsh@irish-times.ie