Inside Politics:Over the past week Bertie Ahern has proved, not that any further proof was needed, that Charlie Haughey got it exactly right when he described our current Taoiseach as "the most skilful, the most devious and the most cunning of them all".
Bertie Ahern's presentation of his foray to the High Court as a move to protect the constitutional rights of TDs to Dáil privilege drew knowing smiles all round. In Leinster House nobody doubts that it is a finely timed manoeuvre designed to delay the publication of the tribunal report for at least six months or more.
The implication is that Ahern envisages himself being safely ensconced in a new job, probably in Europe, by the time the tribunal issues its final report. There has been some tittering at the High Court's decision to hear the Taoiseach's challenge to the tribunal on April 1st, but whatever way you look at it, one thing is clear: the April fool will certainly not be Bertie Ahern.
His handling of the controversy that began when The Irish Times published its first story about his personal finances in September 2006 has been a bravura display of political survival skills.
While Ahern, at times, gave the appearance of stumbling from one garbled explanation to the next, he nonetheless managed to remain in total control of Fianna Fáil, to lead his party to a stunning general election performance and then put a rock-solid coalition Government together. There has not been a squeak of dissent from any element of the coalition that put him back in the Taoiseach's office for a third term.
All this has been achieved despite obvious contradictions, evasions and frankly incredible explanations about how he managed to accumulate wads of cash for his personal use, some of which ended up in a safe in his constituency office or was lodged into one of the bank accounts under his control, during a period when he was minister for finance.
Ahern's feat has been to conjure away one problem after another in an amazing display of political magic. Nobody can quite see how he managed to make his problems vanish, or at least become obscured, but he is sitting pretty in his 11th year as Taoiseach, while his opponents have been left to scratch their heads.
His response to media questions last Monday after news about his High Court challenge broke was a classic example of Ahern's political footwork. He brushed away the challenge as a mere legal technicality that his lawyers had insisted on him taking to protect the constitutional rights of all TDs to Dáil privilege.
The fact that the move ran counter to Ahern's pledge to the Dáil, and later to the electorate, that he was co-operating fully with the tribunal and looking forward to answering all its questions, appeared to cause no embarrassment to him, his Government colleagues or his Coalition partners.
Eamon Gilmore summed it up by saying that the Taoiseach was "trying to elevate to the status of a constitutional principle his personal act of political self-preservation". Ahern and party colleagues cited the precedent of TDs like Dick Spring, Pat Rabbitte and Tomás MacGiolla, who had gone to the courts to defend Dáil privilege. The big distinction is that those cases were taken by TDs trying to protect their sources, while Ahern's case is about protecting himself from being cross-examined about statements he made to the Dáil.
Of course there is every chance that the Taoiseach's legal challenge will succeed. The important thing, though, is probably not whether the challenge succeeds, but the fact that it will almost inevitably delay the tribunal report into next year.
One of the lessons Ahern learned from his mentor, Charles Haughey, was how to buy time and give himself the maximum room for political manoeuvre by delaying decisions until the last possible moment. He could have mounted his challenge to the tribunal back in September but left it until now for a purpose, even if nobody is quite sure what that purpose is.
There is a strong case to be made for suggesting that it has all to do with his exit strategy from the Taoiseach's office. If the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is passed, then a new prestige post of president of the European Council will be created.
Who better for this job of presiding over the deliberations of EU heads of government than the longest-serving of them all, Bertie Ahern.
Of course there is plenty of competition. President Sarkozy of France has publicly backed Tony Blair for the job but Britain's image as the reluctant man of the EU member states will tell heavily against him. The other thing against Blair is that he is controversial and high-profile, and that is not what the other EU prime ministers are looking for in a council president.
By contrast Ahern is a much more emollient figure and better suited to the canny chairman role that the post requires. He has been cultivating German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and with her support could well pip Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, for the job.
The post will be filled in April of next year, assuming the Irish electorate votes Yes to the Lisbon Treaty. It would suit Ahern very nicely if the Mahon tribunal was unable to issue its report until after that date. Once ensconced in the job, it might not matter very much what a judicial tribunal in Ireland had to say about his actions in the long-distant past.