For the first time in months, Bertie Ahern was shifty and unconvincing as he faced his critics and offered a faulty memory in defence of his handling of the Ray Burke affair and the receipt of £30,000 from Fitzwilton.

Mr Burke had been the minister for communications who in 1989 granted 19 broadcasting licences, out of the 29 available, to Princes Holdings, a company controlled by Dr Tony O'Reilly.

This had been done, John Bruton asserted, despite an official requirement that competition be encouraged. Had this decision been sanctioned by the Cabinet, the Fine Gael leader wondered? What had been the reason for the payment of £30,000 by the Fitzwilton subsidiary to Mr Burke in a cheque made out to cash in 1989? And had the payment influenced any subsequent official decisions?

Pat Rabbitte spread the political manure. Independent Newspapers and Fitzwilton were, to his mind, different sides of the same coin, and their commercial interests coincided in the person of Dr O'Reilly.

The Independent group had been extraordinarily supportive of Fianna Fail in the last general election, to the extent of publishing a front-page editorial demanding "pay-back time" against the outgoing coalition government of Fine Gael, the Labour Party and Democratic Left. And its limited coverage of the present controversy had been "extraordinary".

Why hadn't Mr Ahern corrected the Dail record when he discovered that the money paid to Fianna Fail had come from Fitzwilton and not from two construction companies? The Taoiseach had tried to ringfence the Burke problem, but had failed.

With Fianna Fail at a historic high of 63 per cent in the opinion polls, offering the first overall majority in 22 years, Ruairi Quinn went for broke.

Not for the Labour Party leader an oblique attack on Fianna Fail. He went straight for the jugular. In his Dail speech, Mr Ahern had declared: "I knew nothing about Rennicks [the Fitzwilton subsidiary] until we were in the course of preparing the affidavit [in March]."

Not so, said Mr Quinn. Dick Spring had received an anonymous letter last autumn telling him that Mr Burke had demanded and received £30,000 from Rennicks in 1989. He had personally raised the matter with Mr Ahern and had asked him to check it out.

Memories of Spring the Destroyer stirred on the Fianna Fail benches. TDs heard the faint sound of a trapdoor bolt being drawn. But the Taoiseach rallied. He couldn't remember such a conversation. On second thoughts, he could remember two conversations with Mr Spring. But neither of them had been about Rennicks . . . as far as he could recall. Mind you, if Mr Spring said such a conversation took place, he accepted that.

Suddenly, copies of that anonymous letter were as common as snuff at a wake. John Bruton had got one and forwarded it to the tribunal. That, he felt, was why Fianna Fail had been served with an order for discovery of documents last February.

Democratic Left had got one, but its chief allegation of a donation to Mr Burke in support of an application for IDA grants hadn't checked out. So it had spiked it.

And then Mr Ahern seemed to say the Rennick letter had also been among a batch received by him. But nothing had been done. The right questions had not been asked at Fianna Fail headquarters.

TURNING over old stones could be a worrisome business, particularly in the light of two sitting tribunals and the findings of the ground-breaking Moriarty tribunal, in relation to Charles Haughey. Allegations that Mr Burke had received £80,000 from the two construction companies had been transmuted by the former minister into a £30,000 donation, which coincided nicely with the Fitzwilton offering. But it was all open to challenge within the tribunal.

As Question Time dragged on, the Taoiseach seemed more uneasy. What he knew, when he knew it and what he did with that knowledge became jumbled and confused.

By the end of two hours Mr Ahern wasn't even sure if he had asked Ray Burke specific questions about receiving money from named construction companies. He had been concerned to find out whether any wrongdoing had occurred. And he had been assured by Mr Burke that it had not.

Worse than that, Mr Ahern and his trusted emissary, Dermot Ahern, had been misled by the construction firm and by the Fitzwilton subsidiary. Initially, they had been told no money had been given to Mr Burke. It was only when formal evidence was discovered that the situation changed.

With both Mr Burke and his benefactors pleading innocence, what could a Taoiseach do? Other than leave the matter to the tribunal set up to investigate the matter?

But it wasn't as simple as that. Under pressure Mr Ahern accepted the Flood tribunal didn't have the power to investigate the Fitzwilton/ Independent Newspapers/MMDS angle. That would require a new tribunal; new terms of reference or a committee of the Dail. And the Taoiseach wasn't offering anything like that.

As for Mr Bruton's question of whether the Cabinet had sanctioned the granting of 19 MMDS licences to Princes Holdings, he conceded that would have fallen within Mr Burke's responsibilities as a minister.

Mr Ahern had come out fighting. Fianna Fail's new broom was absolutely committed to the principles of "financial propriety and probity in the conduct of public affairs".

But, by the end of the debate, the campaigning cloak was threadbare. Mr Ahern had clearly operated on a need-to-know basis.

But so far as Fianna Fail backbenchers were concerned this was yesterday's business, involving a minister who had resigned. They could live with the shadow of Charlie Haughey. So what was another ex-minister? Anyway, the party had turned its back on that episode in its existence. A bright new future beckoned.