The latest crisis for McCreevy will test even his skills, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Reporter
Faced with difficulties since he became Minister for Finance five years ago, Mr Charlie McCreevy often resorted to bluster, mixed with some folksy humour, to get him out of trouble.
Even those undoubted skills are unlikely to do much to redeem his reputation now with those who believe that he masterminded the most "dishonest" election campaign in history. Whether he did or not is academic, even though the Finance memorandum is a statement of the blindingly obvious for anyone who has paid much attention to the public finances in recent years.
However, the issue is not about content, but rather the timing of its preparation. The Minister might not be convicted of deception in a court of law on the issue, but the court of public opinion has lower standards of proof.
Frequently, embattled ministers find themselves left swinging in the wind by their cabinet colleagues when the going gets rough until they decide whether the individual can survive.
Such is not Mr McCreevy's fate, at least for now. Yesterday colleagues, led by the Tánaiste and Progressive Democrats leader, Ms Harney, Mr Seamus Brennan and Mr Dermot Ahern rolled out to support him.
The lack of an appearance on television by the Taoiseach is forgivable temporarily, since he was in Copenhagen for a two-day meeting of European Union leaders. Presumably, however, the fax machine works from there as well as anywhere else, so one could, perhaps, wonder at Mr Ahern's failure to issue a statement of support for his most senior Minister.
Yesterday both Mr Brennan and Mr Dermot Ahern indicated the Government's main defence: that the €900 million cutbacks proposed are in future levels of service.
Following the two men down this particular road leads one quickly into the realm of Alice in Wonderland, where words for The Walrus meant whatever he wanted them to mean.
The now famous memo reads: "Ministers should prepare their pre-Budget Estimates proposals for 2003, 2004 and 2005 on the basis of an overall reduction of €900 million in the 2003 cost of the Existing Level of Service." Strictly speaking, the Brennan-Ahern argument has some logic to it, that is, the cutbacks proposed refer to the 2003 cost of services already provided this year.
But how could the same level be provided with such a hole made in budgets? Such support for Mr McCreevy has not always been evident. During the Hugh O'Flaherty row colleagues shook their heads at his refusal to abandon his plan to appoint the former Supreme Court judge to the European Investment Bank.
And stubbornness is Mr McCreevy's Achilles heel. For all his bonhomie, he rarely displays any sense of self-doubt, at least not when he is in the public eye. SSIAs, tax individualisation, the list of such occasions is near-endless.
Until now one of his greatest political strengths has always been that he has been regarded as "straight", the guy who will give it to you from the hip, with no window-dressing or mealy-mouthed words.
That reputation has been badly damaged, and at a time when it would have been useful with rockier economic waters and the Nice Treaty looming large on the political landscape.
Ironically, the Minister has occasionally given the impression that he would relish a period in power when harsh medicine needed to be handed out to save the public from itself.
More than a few in the world of politics are sure that he believes he has never received his due public credit because he was in command of the economy during times of plenty.
If he wants to be the hard man of Irish politics, he certainly has his chance now.