As a sense of expectation grew in Leinster House throughout yesterday at the prospect of Ms Beverly Cooper-Flynn facing expulsion rather than decrying her own flesh and blood, Fianna Fail deputies were more pragmatic than sympathetic to her position.

"We're not asking her to hang her own father. We're only expecting her to do what Sean Haughey had to do when he supported the Government in setting up the tribunal that showed up his father," said one TD.

Last night a career that began with such glittering hope lay seriously damaged as Ms Cooper-Flynn marched stony-faced through the Opposition lobby.

It was not just her decision to vote against the Government and face automatic loss of the whip that dismayed her colleagues. It was her insistence that, in refusing to support the Government's call on her father to make a statement, she claimed she was being loyal to the principles of Fianna Fail. That went down badly with the party hierarchy and put paid to her ambitions for now.

In the light of all that has happened it is difficult to imagine how her father, Mr Padraig Flynn, once got a standing ovation at a Fianna Fail ardfheis. Today he is a source of grievance in the party he represented in the Dail for 16 years.

Deputies are indignant at his stubborn refusal to clarify whether he received £50,000 from the Luton-based property dealer, Mr Tom Gilmartin. They resent his defiance in the face of a request from Fianna Fail HQ that he explain what happened.

"On a personal level, it has been difficult for Beverly to come into the House in recent times. But then she is here because she is her father's daughter and she has to take the rough with the smooth," one of her parliamentary party colleagues remarked.

From the outset of her career in national politics in June 1997 there appears to have been more rough than smooth. After barely a year in the Dail and when she was still less than 32 years old, she became embroiled in the NIB scandal, prompting threats of legal action against a retired Meath farmer, Mr James Howard, and RTE.

A former employee of National Irish Bank, she demanded that Charlie Bird of RTE go on national television and apologise. She trenchantly denied Mr Howard's claims that she encouraged him to dodge taxes through the purchase of the controversial NIBCMI financial package.

She denied that she had even met the Howard family, let alone urged him to buy the product, and she instituted legal proceedings against the station. It is understood Ms Cooper-Flynn wanted the case to be dealt with quickly, but this is unlikely to happen because of orders of discovery.

At some point she will face questioning by the High Court inspectors investigating the offshore CMI scheme.

At the height of the NIB affair she arrived daily in Leinster House with an air of supreme confidence, much the same as in latter days.