In order to appreciate the extent to which Bertie Ahern obsesses about avoiding divisions in Fianna Fáil, one has only to recall how he spent the evening before he became leader, Noel Whelanargues.
On November 17th, 1995, Albert Reynolds resigned as leader of the party and the leadership election was fixed for the following Saturday. Support for Bertie Ahern to succeed Reynolds was overwhelming.
Notwithstanding this, Ahern spent a lot of time late on Friday night and into the early hours of Saturday morning working the phones. Much of his time was spent talking to the handful of TDs who were closest to Máire Geoghegan-Quinn who, at that stage, was also contesting the leadership.
Geoghegan-Quinn was then minister for justice putting her at the heart of the confusing series of controversies about High Court appointments and the Brendan Smyth case that gave rise to the collapse of the Reynolds-Spring government. As a result, her leadership bid unfairly suffered collateral damage. By Friday evening she had just a few promised votes.
Ahern spoke to these TDs, not because he was seeking to pry them away and leave Geoghegan-Quinn humiliated, but because he wanted them to persuade her to withdraw her candidature.
Winning the leadership by an overwhelming vote was not enough for Ahern. He was determined to be the first leader since Lemass to be elected unanimously. He wanted to forge unity from the outset. As chief whip during the Haughey years, as director of elections during the Lenihan presidential election campaign and as minister for finance during the Reynolds administration, Ahern had seen close up how divisions had sapped the party's political energies.
He was determined that his elevation to the leadership would mark a new phase of harmony within the parliamentary party. Maintaining internal party harmony has always been a priority since. It explains some of his recent machinations around the succession, and it also does much to explain his approach to the selection of Ministers and Ministers of State.
Bertie Ahern has got some of his previous cabinet and minister of state reshuffles wrong. In 2002 he allowed expectations to build that he was going to make radical changes, only to draw back at the last minute. More frequently he has created bad feeling with the messy way in which he has handled some minister of state appointments, most famously when he delayed filling the gap created by Ivor Callely's resignation in December 2005.
This time around he has got a lot right in both his Cabinet and Minister of State selection, although inevitably there are still some left disappointed.
Although he has often been described as conservative in his promotion policy, Bertie Ahern can be more correctly described as incremental. During the Ahern years there has been no cabinet culling like that engaged in by Albert Reynolds who sacked more than two-thirds of Charles Haughey's ministers in one fell sweep. The Ahern era has been characterised instead by cabinet pruning, with a steady flow of personnel in and out of the cabinet room.
In 2000 David Andrews retired from cabinet as a prelude to stepping down from the Dáil. In 2002 Mary O'Rourke lost her Dáil seat and therefore her place at cabinet. In 2004 Joe Walsh announced he was retiring from the Dáil and left cabinet that September.
Two of Ahern's most senior ministers were moved or persuaded to move by the offer of other significant posts - Charlie McCreevy, who went to the European Commission in 2004 and John O'Donoghue who recently became Ceann Comhairle.
Contrary to common misconception Ahern has not been afraid to demote people from cabinet. In 2002 he demoted three ministers, Frank Fahey, Síle de Valera and Jim McDaid. Michael Smith and Michael Woods were dropped from cabinet in 2004 and, on this occasion, he has demoted Dick Roche.
The desire to avoid rancour among parliamentary party colleagues is also apparent from the list of Ministers of State announced this week. Twelve of Fianna Fáil's 78 TDs are Cabinet members and one is Ceann Comhairle. That leaves 65 people who could, theoretically at least, have been appointed Minister of State.
However, 19 of those were only elected for the first time last month and as such are - at least according to the Ahern doctrine of promotions - ineligible for ministerial office.
Another half a dozen or so Fianna Fáil TDs could be classified as in the post-ministerial phase of their careers as former ministers and/or because they are likely to retire at the next election. That still leaves Ahern with about 40 TDs who could have expected appointment as Minister of State. Among those were many from the class of 1997, frustrated that they had not yet made the first rung of the ministerial ladder.
In an exercise of classic Ahern lateral thinking when it comes to problem-solving, he gave himself extra leeway by creating three new Minister of State positions. Together with the demotion of Frank Fahey and Noel Treacy, this enabled him to promote five backbenchers. Three of those promoted come from the class of 1997 - Pat Carey, John McGuinness and Billy Kelleher and are all long overdue promotion.
The promotion of two second-termers - Márie Hoctor and Jimmy Devins was more curious. While these promotions can be justified on the basis of their particular qualifications and (in the case of Hoctor, gender), this will do little to appease the justified disappointment of some of the class of 1997 who have been overlooked having fought the good fight for the Government for more than 10 years. There are a number of able deputies - of whom Seán Fleming and Seán Ardagh are the most obvious - who can rightly feel that their opportunity should have come this time round.