Mr John Ellis has bowed to the inevitable and resigned from the chairmanship of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine. His decision was overdue. He intends to remain as a Fianna Fail TD for Sligo-Leitrim. The unusual circumstances surrounding Mr Ellis and his business affairs will not now need to be played out across the floor of the Dail.
While another Government crisis has been averted, however, the manner in which the Taoiseach handled this controversy will scarcely enhance his standing in the eyes of the public. At first, he grossly underestimated the gravity of the Ellis controversy. Subsequent actions appear to have been dictated by Mr Ellis' implicit threat to resign his Dail seat - and precipitate a Government crisis - rather than any issue of principle.
Only last Friday in London, Mr Ahern said that the events surrounding Mr Ellis were "things that are really consigned to history". This approach calls into question his very deliberate efforts to distance himself from the findings of the McCracken tribunal, the deliberations of the Moriarty tribunal, and all that he has said about new standards of accountability in Fianna Fail.
The leadership of Fianna Fail - and the Government - was deluding itself if it thought that Fine Gael, in putting down a motion of no confidence in Mr Ellis' chairmanship, was reviving matters of history. Most of the serious revelations about Mr Ellis have been made in the past month, in fact, including the NIB write-off of about £250,000 and the bank settlement for £20,000. It was only last month that the Moriarty tribunal heard how former Taoiseach, Mr Haughey, gave Mr Ellis almost £25,000 in two instalments from the State-funded party leader's allowance to clear debts at two cattle marts. Both actions were taken to prevent Mr Ellis being declared bankrupt as he would have lost, automatically, his Dail seat. It is only in the past few weeks that searching questions are being raised about Mr Ellis' Pakistan connections, particularly his non-executive directorship, along with his wife, of the Karachi-based Indus Bank and his representations to secure the Government's nomination of Mr Haseeb Ahsan as Ireland's new honorary consul to Pakistan.
Mr Ellis, in his resignation statement, maintains that he has done nothing wrong. The incidents which led to the current situation happened a decade ago and the business failures, which were outside his control, were "well-known to everyone", he claims. The IFA makes much of the fact that Mr Ellis decided to settle the liabilities of Stanlow Trading - his former company - with farmers in Sligo-Leitrim while creditors outside his constituency are still left without payment. The IFA president, Mr Parlon, believes that yesterday's resignation is not enough. This issue will be teased out further in coming days.
Politically, the Ellis resignation has given the Government some breathing space. But it is clear that the wider questions surrounding Mr Ellis, no more than the Moriarty and Flood tribunals, the DIRT inquiry by the Dail's Public Accounts Committee, and the Ansbacher accounts investigation, could not be consigned to history. Mr Ahern has, belatedly, come to accept this reality. But, he would better serve his Government, his party and the citizens of this State if he appeared to be guided more by principle and less by expediency.