The Taoiseach will give the graveside oration after the State funeral for Charles Haughey on Friday, thus marking the end of an extraordinary political life of achievement and controversy.
There were fond and warm tributes from across the political spectrum to the 80-year-old former taoiseach who died yesterday morning after struggling with cancer for over a decade.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny reflected the generous tone struck by the large number who made statements on Mr Haughey's passing, saying he had been "an outstanding figure in Irish politics who had made an enormous contribution" to the State.
He said there would be "other days" in which to discuss Mr Haughey the politician - his only oblique reference to the controversy and division inspired by what Labour leader Pat Rabbitte called the "darker side" of Mr Haughey's political legacy.
The Taoiseach has cancelled his planned attendance at the EU summit in Brussels tomorrow and Friday, having been asked to give the graveside oration by Mr Haughey's family.
President Mary McAleese will interrupt her State visits to a number of African countries to attend the funeral. She will be joined by political, business, civic and church leaders and members of the judiciary. The invitation list will be finalised today.
Mr Haughey's remains will leave his Kinsealy home tomorrow morning for Donnycarney church, where from 11.30am to 4pm members of the public can file past the open coffin. A removal service will take place at 5pm tomorrow evening. The Requiem Mass takes place on Friday at noon, following which Mr Haughey will be interred with military honours at St Fintan's Cemetery, Sutton.
The dominant and most divisive political figure of the past 40 years, Mr Haughey spent 11 years as a cabinet minister and a further seven as taoiseach, in three different spells. However, in the past decade it has been the investigations into the sources of his income and his connections with big business that have dominated assessments of his legacy.
The Taoiseach acknowledged last night that there had been "a few blips" along the way in Mr Haughey's political career, and that he himself had made some of the strongest speeches critical of Mr Haughey in the wake of tribunal revelations.
"But in any balanced assessment of 35 years in history it [ Mr Haughey's legacy] will come out well."
Almost since his entry into political life Mr Haughey attracted extreme loyalty and extreme disdain in equal measure. He was the rising star of Fianna Fáil throughout the 1960s. He was the most ambitious and successful of the generation of young men - including Brian Lenihan, Donogh O'Malley, Patrick Hillery and George Colley - who gained a foothold at senior level in the party and government at that time.
He was first minister for justice, then agriculture and then finance, earning a reputation as a reformer for providing free public transport for pensioners, introducing the Succession Act and bringing in tax concessions for artists. He suffered his first and most spectacular political reversal in May 1970, being sacked from the cabinet by taoiseach Jack Lynch in advance of the Arms Trial, at which he was acquitted.
The 1979 party leadership contest - in which Mr Haughey defeated Colley by 44 votes to 38 - exposed divisions in the party that continued to surface well into the 1980s. The telephone tapping of the early 1980s created an aura of scandal about his leadership, and he fought off four challenges to his position in the early 1980s.
The "Haughey factor" ultimately led to the formation of the Progressive Democrats, led by Desmond O'Malley, in 1985. Mr O'Malley's daughter, Fiona O'Malley TD, said yesterday that her father would not be making any public statement as he had retired from public life. She expressed her own personal sympathy to the Haughey family.
In becoming in 1989 the first Fianna Fáil leader to abandon the "core value" of not coalescing with other parties, he disenchanted several senior figures. Ultimately, it was the statement by Seán Doherty that Haughey had been aware of the telephone tapping that led to his resignation in 1992.
Despite the almost constant struggle for power and regular crises, Mr Haughey's governments will also be looked back on as helping lay the foundations both for economic prosperity and peace in the North.
In 1987, as leader of a minority government under pressure from Fine Gael, Mr Haughey encouraged his minister for finance Ray MacSharry to implement spending cuts now given credit for bringing order to the public finances.
He also played an important role in the early stages of the dialogue between John Hume and Gerry Adams that ultimately led to the peace process and the republican movement's turn towards politics and away from violence.
He is survived by his wife Maureen, sons Conor, Ciarán and Seán and daughter Éimear.