They may be nervous, but party members will continue to support Bertie Ahern, writes Noel Whelan.
IN THE immediate aftermath of Gráinne Carruth's evidence to the Mahon tribunal, no backbenchers emerged to call for Bertie Ahern's resignation and his Coalition partners initially sat shtum. As a result, the media were left to rummage around Fianna Fáil's councillor groups in search of dissent.
A handful of councillors emerged to call on Ahern to name a retirement date before next year's local elections. These isolated councillors were rewarded for their courage with copious amounts of publicity in the echo chamber which is the Easter silly season. Reports of supposed widespread concern among Fianna Fáil councillors were grouped with relatively obvious observations from two Ministers of State - one to the effect that the Taoiseach's now famous RTÉ television interview with Bryan Dobson might in hindsight have been a bad idea, and another to the effect that Gráinne Carruth's evidence was disquieting - to buttress a week of headlines about the Taoiseach being under sustained political pressure.
It is worth remembering that Bertie Ahern has been under sustained political pressure on this issue for 18 months. This pressure was most acute in the days after the original story of payments broke in this newspaper in September 2006. It was acute again in the first 10 days of the election campaign last May with further revelations about the financing of his house.
Many stories of Bertie Ahern's political demise have been printed or broadcast over those 18 months, yet he is still standing. His mandate as Taoiseach is recharged by a third election victory and no significant opposition to his continued leadership of Fianna Fáil has emerged.
Events in and around the tribunal over the last month do present further difficulties for Bertie Ahern. The revelation that €30,000 of Fianna Fáil's money was made available to Celia Larkin to buy a house and evidence from Gráinne Carruth and a bank official that sterling was lodged to Ahern's account are problematic. The Carrruth evidence not only raises further significant questions about Ahern's finances in the 1990s but also appears to undermine the version of events he has advanced in saying that these lodgements were from salary cheques and that he never dealt in sterling other than small cash amounts during trips to England.
However, recent developments have not led to anything close to the seismic shift in his standing within his parliamentary party or among the public that some in the media assumed or hoped. As of yet, there is no evidence it has given rise to anything more than a ripple of concern.
In opinion polls and otherwise, the majority of the electorate has repeatedly expressed itself unconvinced by Bertie Ahern's explanations but also happy for him to continue as Taoiseach, at least for the present. The Fianna Fáil party has been even warmer in its support. Many may haughtily denounce the Fianna Fáil party and the masses for this stance, but that does not change the situation.
Difficult and all as it may be, those of us claiming to analyse politics have to park any moral view of the rights and wrongs of what has been revealed in evidence at the Mahon tribunal in order better to assess its political implications.
John Gormley may have experienced disquiet in Green Party circles and Mary Harney and Fiona O'Malley may have found similar unhappiness among the dwindling Progressive Democrats support base, but there does not, as of yet, appear to be any widespread public backlash. If there was, Fianna Fáil's backbenchers, most of whom have been ensconced in their constituencies over the break, would have been the first to sniff it. All indications are that the public, as of now, are happy to wait for further explanation and for Ahern to continue in office.
Of course, the recent Larkin-Carruth stories have led to some shift in how senior Fianna Fáil politicians respond to this story. They stick to a mantra about the tribunal being the place to address all these matters. They have not and cannot engage with the details of recent evidence because they don't know what the Taoiseach's explanation for the sterling lodgements will be.
The more this story runs, the less Fianna Fáil Ministers can be certain that Ahern's explanation will be adequate and the more careful they have to be to ensure they are not collaterally damaged by anything the tribunal might yet discover.
That said, they know that neither the public nor the party membership would thank them for a hasty heave against a leader who, although damaged and notwithstanding the fact he has been Taoiseach for almost 11 years, remains incredibly popular.
Fianna Fáil Ministers and backbenchers will return to the Dáil next week knowing that, on balance, the view of their constituents and the wider public has not changed in the last month. They will be unsure how Ahern can reconcile the apparent conflict in evidence heard by the tribunal. They will be nervous about potential developments but, for now, they will continue to be supportive.