Next Friday it will be precisely a year since the payments controversy surrounding Bertie Ahern first broke publicly on the front pages of this newspaper, writes Noel Whelan.
This is now a stale story. Although there were dramatic new twists last May when further details about the purchase of his home came into the public domain and although the story took some turns this week, it no longer commands the public attention it did a year ago.
It is creating a lot of noise in the media and some background interference in the political system, but all the signs are that, having tuned in when the story first broke and again during the election campaign, most of the public have now tuned out.
Even if the public was paying attention to the complex details set out in the testimony of the various tribunal witnesses this week, nothing they heard will have changed their minds about this issue. Most people have had their original views on the payments confirmed.
Those who are ardent supporters of Bertie Ahern, inside and outside Fianna Fáil, felt that he was treated unfairly by the media when the story was first published last autumn and they still feel he is being treated unfairly this autumn. They take their cue from the Taoiseach's own tone.
They are angry that any credence is being given to the allegations of Tom Gilmartin whom they see as a fantasist. They are outraged that Ahern, who has none of the trappings of personal wealth and has spent all his life in public service, has had the most intimate details of his private financial and living arrangements exposed to public glare.
They see Ahern as the victim of a politically-motivated drip feed of leaks. They feel he is being hounded by an investigation that has gone off the rails.
To these people, the media, whom they view as predominantly anti-Ahern, are a pack in pursuit not of a story but of a scalp.
Even if some of these Ahern loyalists allow themselves to accept that the nature of his financial arrangements in the mid-1990s was unorthodox, they explain it away as flowing from the particular circumstances of his life at that time.
At the other end of the spectrum are Ahern's opponents, political or otherwise, who feel that he is getting his comeuppance.
These people are working on the assumption that the money which made up the large lodgements was suspect, and point to the changing versions that Ahern and his cohorts have given of where, when and how these monies were received as indicative of his inability to be straight.
Those on this end of the spectrum had hoped that this controversy would bring Ahern down politically, either because it would damage his chances in the election, or would cause him to be toppled from within his own party. Now, however, they comfort themselves with the notion that it will have damaged his reputation, will undermine his legacy or will have some impact on his prospect of getting some big European or international post when he retires as Taoiseach.
The majority of the public takes a middle view. For a period after the story broke last September it was potentially seismic in its impact.
Things changed when Ahern did his RTÉ interview with Brian Dobson. His explanation that he received loans from friends and donations in Manchester was curious, but most people took the view that for him to be forced out of office because of these payments would have been disproportionate.
They appreciate that by receiving these payments he wrongly left himself beholden to donors and they are frustrated by the confused story he has given. However, they have weighted these wrongs in the 1990s against his wider political achievements in the decade since.
These considerations, coupled with personal sympathy for his plight, gave rise to a bounce for Ahern and his party in the opinion polls last October.
The public were again forced to consider the issue of Ahern and his personal finances during the election campaign, when more details emerged.
Most people appear to have taken the view then that the management of the economy and the quality of political leadership mattered more than differing accounts of the financing of his house.
However, it would be wrong to read the rally in the polls from which he benefited last autumn or the surge to him and his party in the last week of the election as occurring because the public accepted his account of events.
Most people on balance don't believe the Taoiseach is giving a full account of these monies. However, assessing him in the round, they don't believe that he is corrupt either.
The soap opera aspects of this story have again stimulated public curiosity this week. The cavalier way in which large amounts of cash were dealt with has been the subject of pub talk or water cooler conversation.
Although entertained, the general public's view of Ahern as a political leader has not been shifted by recent testimony.
In hindsight, the most significant outcome of the Taoiseach's appearance at the Mahon tribunal may be the impression left after Thursday's evidence that his response to the tribunal's initial queries was more circumspect and tardy thahe would have liked the public to believe. This is why he was so anxious to refute this suggestion on Friday.
The bottom line is that the payments controversy, while it will continue to be an irritant to him and erode his reputation, will not cause Bertie Ahern any great political difficulties in the short or medium term.
The longer term doesn't matter to him politically because he has already indicated a timescale for his retirement.
The controversy may have some impact on how history treats Ahern, especially if the tribunal report - when it finally comes - is strong in its condemnation of him.
History, however, will also have to assess him in the round.