Back in 1997, the idea that Ray Burke would end up in jail seemed beyond belief. Yet today is his first full day in a jail - for which he used to have direct ministerial responsibility - and there is a sense of anti-climax, writes Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent.
It is partly because he is yesterday's man, and partly because times have changed dramatically.
When Burke was at large in Dublin and national politics, there was a belief among many politicians, public servants, journalists and others in or close to public life that they were living in an era of widespread and barely concealed corruption.
It was the time of Charles Haughey, Liam Lawlor, George Redmond, cash in brown paper bags for councillors and hundreds of millions flowing into offshore hiding places.
Now there undoubtedly still is corruption and tax evasion but there is not the sense that it is as systematic - or as easy - as it was in the 1970s, 1980s and some of the 1990s.
The long, slow bringing to account of Burke, Liam Lawlor and George Redmond, the disgracing of Charles Haughey and the ruining of Michael Lowry's cabinet career have all discouraged such activity.
New political ethics guidelines, much more effective State pursuit of financial wrongdoing through the Revenue Commissioners and the Criminal Assets Bureau have discouraged it further.
And the internationalisation and success of the economy have ensured that endemic corruption cannot be tolerated if we are to continue to be regarded as a safe place for the owners of foreign capital.
There was no statement or comment from the Taoiseach yesterday to mark the momentous event of a minister appointed by him being sent to prison.
When he spoke in the Dáil back in 1997 the Taoiseach clearly did not envisage this outcome: "In the case of Deputy Ray Burke, I see a much more sinister development: The persistent hounding of an honourable man to resign an important position on the basis of innuendo and unproven allegations," he said.
It was the consistency and vehemence of Mr Ahern's defence of Burke that gave the summer and autumn of 1997 its character of extraordinary political crisis.
A government minister fighting for political survival as allegations of impropriety mount is always a dramatic political spectacle.
But in the standard script in all democracies, the prime minister of the day first pledges full support for the minister, only to slip into ambivalent, distant mode if the minister fails to dispel the allegations.
Ultimately, when the prime minister fears that he or his government may suffer some damage, the minister is cast to the wolves.
But in September 1997, the Taoiseach's persistence in remaining loyal to Burke was remarkable.
Gardaí had first investigated Burke in the 1970s in connection with alleged planning corruption. Anyone who spent any time talking to people involved in development in north county Dublin in the 1970s and 1980s heard consistent reports that Burke was receiving large sums of money from developers.
Mr Ahern heard these stories before he appointed Burke to cabinet, but having made some cursory inquiries went ahead anyway.
And in September 1997, even after Burke had announced his resignation, Mr Ahern condemned "a sustained campaign of incremental intensity" against Burke.
"There comes a time when even the strongest shoulder bows, when even the stoutest heart falters, when even the best can resist no longer," he said.
As Martin Cullen stands alone this week waiting for the reports on his awarding of contracts to a constituency supporter and friend, Monica Leech, with the Taoiseach having run a mile from him, how he must long for a bit of that loyalty.
The Taoiseach's attitude to the affair has never fully been explained.
He rescued Burke and Liam Lawlor from political obscurity by appointing them to his first front bench in 1994.
Back then the Taoiseach's unswerving loyalty to Burke led to speculation in the Dáil and elsewhere that the demise of Burke would have broader political implications: that Mr Ahern was desperate to save Burke because if he fell, others would go with him.
His reluctance for a long time to criticise Lawlor was seen in the same light. In the end there was no domino effect. Besides the fall of Burke and Lawlor there was a series of isolated incidents involving Fianna Fáil TDs: Denis Foley had dodged tax by using an Ansbacher account; Ned O'Keeffe neglected to draw attention, as required, to a family interest in an issue he was voting on in the Dáil; John Ellis had had some debts discharged by Charles Haughey from the Fianna Fáil party leader's account; Beverley Flynn had sold financial products used for tax evasion; Michael Collins had dodged tax using a bogus non-resident bank account.
The least of these incidents betrays a laxness about complying with obligations.
The more serious ones display straightforward double standards as people whose job as legislators involved devising a tax system for the rest of us felt free to operate outside it themselves. It was this double standard that Judge Desmond Hogan drew attention to yesterday, when he remarked that Burke had been convicted of breaching a Finance Act which came into law when he was a member of the legislature.
Press reports on planning corruption started in 1974 with Joe McAnthony's major investigation in the Sunday Independent which centred on Burke.
Media exposes of wrongdoing in the banks, the financial relationship between Ben Dunne and Michael Lowry and what the Taoiseach correctly called the "sustained campaign of incremental intensity" to expose Burke's activities contributed to the sense that we may now be in a new era when corruption and tax evasion are less acceptable and less possible.
As Labour's Joan Burton pointed out yesterday, it is important to remember that the evidence which led to Burke's conviction first emerged at the Planning Tribunal.
While evidence at a tribunal cannot be used in a criminal prosecution, its emergence led the Garda investigations in the direction which ultimately secured a conviction.
Some who question the usefulness of tribunals do so because they think the public has learned quite enough about the past already.
Others know the price of everything and the value of nothing.