Bertie Ahern could face political death by a thousand cuts, writes Stephen Collins, Political Editor.
The painstaking cross-examination of the Taoiseach at the Mahon tribunal has been slow to yield definitive answers to the conundrum about his personal finances but the questions that have been raised so far will undoubtedly colour the complexion of political debate over the coming 12 months.
The fundamental issue for both the Government and the Opposition parties is Bertie Ahern's credibility. The tribunal has certainly raised doubts about the story Ahern has given about his personal financial dealings in 1993 and 1994 and has exposed some contradictions between the various accounts he has given to date about those dealings.
So far, though, there has been no knockout punch to undermine Ahern's version of events and the likelihood of one landing is remote.
He has shifted his ground a little, first one way and then the other, so that his account remains in conformity with the bald facts disclosed by the figures in the various bank documents discovered by the tribunal.
Tribunal chairman, Judge Alan Mahon, made the point that there were significant gaps in the money trail which made it impossible for the tribunal to follow it, leaving it dependent on Ahern's narrative of events. Another of the tribunal's three judges, Mary Faherty, pointed out that the Taoiseach yesterday provided "the polar opposite" explanation for his withdrawal of £50,000 from his bank account in 1994 than he had done on earlier occasions.
The slow chipping away at the vulnerable elements of the story about how the then minister for finance lodged money and then withdrew it, converting some of it into sterling in the process, will test his credibility to the limit.
Coping with that will be an issue for supporters and opponents alike.
To date Fianna Fáil colleagues have stood four-square behind Ahern but over time they may be reluctant to maintain that position if their own credibility looks like being damaged in the process.
For the present, though, they show no sign of wavering.
Fine Gael and Labour also have decisions to make about how they respond to Ahern's evidence. Both parties lost their nerve last October when The Irish Times TNSmrbi opinion poll showed Fianna Fáil gaining ground in the wake of the initial payments controversy.
The Opposition feared being burned by taking a too hostile attitude to Ahern and they backed away from the issue.
When the payments issue came roaring back on the first day of the general election campaign in April the two main Opposition parties ran a mile from it.
In the event Fianna Fáil won the election anyway and some Fine Gael and Labour TDs now feel they made a big mistake by not confronting the issue head on and going through the pain barrier of an initial negative response in order to keep Ahern on the defensive.
With the election now over and done with they have nothing to lose by taking a more aggressive stance. The tribunal will not issue its report for a couple of years so the Opposition parties will have to make the running themselves if they want to put the Government under pressure by getting the public to focus on the issue.
It has become a political truism that the payments issue is far too complicated for the public to grasp and that, in any case, people are far more concerned about basic bread-and-butter issues.
There is some truth in this but it is not the whole story and the bottom line is that the issue can be as important as the Opposition parties want to make it.
Ahern has been very successful at creating utter confusion about what it is all about and he again exploited that tactic at the tribunal yesterday.
However, he has now given so many versions of events that he may have given more than one hostage to fortune.
The public will remain mired in confusion unless the Opposition parties are prepared to draw their own conclusions from the evidence already out there and provide the public with a clear alternative version of what happened.
If they do that Ahern could face political death by 1,000 cuts, as he attempts to face down his political opponents on the one hand and deal with the unremitting pressure of the tribunal on the other.
The tribunal may or may not have "a cuckoo in the hedge" as the former chairman Feargus Flood suggested but it certainly has the capacity to pile further pressure on the Taoiseach.
Already what was supposed to have been a two-day exploration of Ahern's four foreign exchange transactions is heading towards its fourth day and may take even longer.
As if that was not enough this is only the first stage in the exploration of his financial transactions.
He will have to come back at a later date to account for the "dig out" money, his savings of £50,000, his purchase of the house and the issue of Quarryvale itself and his involvement in that tale.
It means that he will be in and out of the tribunal on a regular basis over the year ahead and that is where the real damage is likely to arise as he is mired in one controversy after another.