MICHAEL Lowry's speech from the dock added little of substance to what his colleagues and critics already knew or strongly suspected.
And what little it added served only to fill out a portrait of someone so eager to succeed, in business and politics, that when opportunities arose he threw caution to the winds.
As Frank Cluskey once said of an over-enthusiastic opponent, there he was with a smile on his face, his foot on the accelerator and his mind in neutral.
No one seems to have doubted his competence. But he was naive, ambitious and self-assured to the point of irresponsibility. In a climate in which risk-taking was much admired, he simply took too many.
When Ben Dunne offered him a chance to set up a company he agreed though it meant forming what seems to have been a highly unorthodox, if not altogether unusual, business relationship with Dunnes Stores.
Had he cared to inquire of suppliers or staff, he might have learned what a close-knit and demanding organisation the Dunnes had inherited from their father; the vice-like grip applied to everyone who served their enterprise.
If he had, such advice, he ignored it.
Not only did he throw in his lot with Dunnes, he embarked on a separate and potentially more demanding career in politics, as a TD, fundraiser and chairman of Fine Gael's demoralised parliamentary party.
John Bruton gave him the job of negotiating coalition with Labour and Democratic Left, then invited him to take charge of one of the most ideologically sensitive Departments, Transport, Energy and Communications, which covers much of the semi-state sector.
He seized that opportunity too, though once more there were reasons for caution: he'd availed of the notorious tax amnesty introduced at Albert Reynolds's behest in 1993; he still had outstanding tax liabilities and he was less than candid in the account of his affairs given to Mr Bruton.
For someone whose work in government was liable to lead to conflict with a wide range of experienced semi-state managers, the risks were obvious. His crusading spirit quickly made enemies and he never bothered to hide his determination to take them on.
Bertie Ahern speculated yesterday that it was Mr Lowry's failure to tell the Taoiseach the whole truth about his tax problems that finally precipitated his resignation.
That may be so: Ministers are required to acknowledge - and to shed - all business interests on appointment to the Cabinet. The Taoiseach is bound to take a serious view of any attempt at concealment.
Mr Bruton was also bound to make it clear that Mr Lowry's affairs would now be examined with the rigour that might be expected of the Revenue Commissioners in the case of any other citizen. It could hardly be otherwise.
Mr Lowry has said he is ready to appear before a committee of the Dail. That, too, is as it ought to be.
The Progressive Democrats and Fianna Fail agree that whether he continues to hold a Dail seat is for Fine Gael and the people of North Tipperary to decide.
But his precise relationship with Mr Dunne remains to be explored. So do the full contents of the Price Waterhouse file and ancillary documents and the persistent reports of £1.1 million paid to a former Fianna Fail Minister.
The Price Waterhouse report, now being examined by Judge Gerard Buchanan before being passed on to a Dail committee, covers only payments by Dunnes. There are wider and, in the long run, more serious questions about relationships between business and politics.
Mr Ahern said yesterday he hoped the Government would ensure the passage of the measure designed to compel witnesses to attend Oireachtas committees and that Mr Ben Dunne might come to be questioned as a result.
GIVEN that if Mr Dunne were to appear he would certainly be asked about the reports of donations to Fianna Fail which have yet to be accounted for, this suggests that Mr Ahern is taking seriously his promise to reform the party.
He looks back with some embarrassment to the tax amnesty which he introduced against his better judgment by all accounts. But he isn't the only politician who'd prefer to forget it and the chorus of indignation it provoked - both now revived with a vengeance.
Labour was in government with Fianna Fail at the time and some of its stouter members were to be heard justifying its introduction and their tolerance of it - as a means of getting some investment into the State, you understand.
As for Fine Gael, the memory must be doubly embarrassing.
In 1993 Mr Bruton's outrage at this fraudster's charter, as Des O'Malley and Mary Harney called it, was spiked by the discovery that, unbeknownst to him, Ivan Yates had proposed something similar.
Now it seems that, unseen by either of them, the chairman of their parliamentary party had joined the queue of slouch-hatted Fianna Failers to pick up his own application papers.
What a cheer that would have raised in the ranks of the Fianna Fail-Labour partnership, had the news reached them in their beleaguered state.
These days, the loudest noise you'll hear is the sound of breaking glass: not so much a case of seasonal goodwill as of people in glasshouses who can't resist the temptation to throw stones.
Indeed, the silence when Mr Lowry sat down on Thursday suggested that many in his audience suddenly realised what a dangerous habit stone-throwing can be.
It's not that politicians are more likely to engage in questionable activity than the rest of the middle classes, rather that their activities - questionable or not - are more likely to be spotted, exaggerated and criticised. Often, it might be said, by those who would be better employed minding their own glasshouses.
SOME commentators (for want of a better word) consider it their duty to complain at regular intervals about the poor standing of politicians in the eyes of the electorate.
These, as a rule, are not political correspondents who spend their working lives in Leinster House and know the score. They're more likely to have a mere casual acquaintance with the place and the work done there or in Merrion Street.
Or they are the well-heeled broadcasters at whom Ruairi Quinn took a swipe the other day, ready to feed prejudice at the level of the lowest common denominator.
Never before, they say, have the people of this State held their public representatives in such low esteem. And some nervous politicians - pessimists or populists - seem prepared to accept the verdict.
But while the commentators presume to speak infallibly of and for the electorate, they take no responsibility for the state of public opinion.
And timid politicians, reluctant to provide leadership that would disturb any corner of the market, wait for the commentators and the public to show the way.