Denis Foley expects to be there, and Charles Haughey got the traditional VIP invitation. These are just two of the reasons Fianna Fail is to adopt a code of conduct for office-holders at its ardfheis. It's not that the past has come back to haunt them: the past hasn't yet gone away.

High opinion-poll ratings, a successful economy, tax cuts and the continued albeit uncertain peace in Northern Ireland, all give the party comfort. Party sources acknowledge, however, that the continuing evidence and allegations of sleaze and the unpredictability of what might emerge next have a debilitating effect on morale among ordinary party members.

The party's survival and prospering in government, despite these difficulties, have led to a belief in Fianna Fail not only that this Government will serve close to a full term, but that its chances of remaining in power after the next election are high.

The very real fear in the period leading up to and following the resignation of Ray Burke from the Cabinet in autumn 1997 that some further allegations could put the party out of power have given way to some confidence in a stable future in government.

The flow of sleaze allegations appears not to have brought poll ratings down. However, there is frustration at high and low levels that it has not shaken off the image of corruption created during and since the Haughey era. The issue has damaged party confidence to the extent that, as one senior figure puts it: "When we hear of some allegation of corruption against some county councillor, we automatically think it's probably one of ours."

Younger elements of the party and others uninvolved in the Haughey era now want to leave all that behind. "Why should we behave as if we have original sin?" asks one senior Fianna Fail figure who had no involvement in Mr Haughey's leadership of the party.

"We have become too apologetic," says another. "We should be more forthright in our expression of disgust at what went on in the past, but we must refuse to buy other people's perceptions. We must not accept the image of dirt."

That won't be easy. Such elements of the party will not, for example, be comfortable with Denis Foley's likely attendance at the RDS this weekend. "I am more than likely to be there," he told The Irish Times this week. He has his admission passes and if he goes he will go "as a TD".

Party sources say that as he is not a member of the Fianna Fail parliamentary party, he cannot be there "as a TD", but that he could be there as a delegate from his cumann or comhairle ceanntair or as an observer.

If he does turn up, he will witness the approval of the new mandatory code for office-holders, which obliges all party candidates to declare they are complying with all their tax obligations. The party may require an office-holder or candidate to prove this.

The code stops short of demanding a tax-clearance certificate from candidates, following major opposition to the idea from within its ranks. The Fine Gael leader, John Bruton, yesterday seized this opportunity to upstage Fianna Fail on the ethics issue by demanding that the Government introduce legislation by June obliging candidates to provide such certificates.

In relation to fund-raising, the code states that donations intended for the party at either national or local level must be forwarded without delay. Financial contributions must not be accepted where they could compromise the independence of public representatives.

Others want to go further. A motion from the Laois-Offaly TD, Sean Fleming, to end business funding of politics will be debated by the ail parliamentary party in the next few weeks. He has some support.

One senior source commented: "There has emerged a strand of opinion within the party - the puritanical tendency - which would say `Let's end any possibility of hassle about this and utterly eliminate corporate donations from the whole political system and move instead to State funding'."

Some ambitious backbenchers are critical of Mr Ahern's relatively conservative reshuffle announced in January. He appears to have chosen to wait until more senior Cabinet members retire rather than demote them in a dramatic reshuffle.

His defenders argue that, despite this, his promotion of Mary Hanafin, who has spent less than three years in the Dail, shows there is hope of advancement for newer deputies. They also point out that there are now just three Ministers, Michael Woods, Mary O'Rourke and, briefly, Michael Smith, who served under Mr Haughey.

Party organisers have attempted to create a sense of rejuvenation and renewal in the party this weekend, with the National Executive tabling a series of motions to reform party membership rules and candidate selection procedures and to abolish so-called "paper cumainn", dormant cumainn used solely to build voting blocs at constituency level rather than being genuine active party branches.

Some resistance to some of these proposals is expected within the party, although they are expected to be endorsed comfortably.

While the ardfheis is designed as a morale boost for party activists, the key aim is image-building. In Fianna Fail's case, the image they are particularly keen to build is that of Mr Ahern.

His personal popularity remains very high in the polls and the party regards him as its greatest asset for the next general election campaign. Party organisers are determined that, when it comes, it will be as presidential in style as possible. They will maintain that the choice boils down to two potential taoisigh, and that they've got the one with broad appeal.

In looking towards the next general election, Fianna Fail headquarters has made considerable progress in getting the organisational issues, the micro-politics, right.

In the 1997 general election and in last year's local government elections, Fianna Fail won crucial extra seats despite a failure to increase the party's national vote. In 1997 it secured 10 extra Dail seats with the same percentage of the vote won in 1992.

In last June's local elections it gained 23 extra council seats across the State through an increase of just 0.1 per cent in its vote.

Seven extra seats would give Fianna Fail an overall Dail majority, and the party has now targeted a number of constituencies where internal divisions lost it seats in 1997, such as Limerick West and Donegal South West.

However, vote-management and candidate strategies have finite ability to deliver: the 39 per cent of the vote won in the local elections would leave the party not just short of a Dail majority but short of the certainty of returning to power as part of a coalition government.

While its core vote has remained solid, the challenge for the party now is to increase its national vote through attracting a good proportion of the 20 per cent who consistently tell opinion pollsters that they do not know for whom they would vote if a general election was called.

Experience shows that a disproportionately large number of those in the "don't know" category are anti-Fianna Fail voters who have not made up their minds as to which of the non-FF candidates they will give their first preference.

It is to these key voters that Fianna Fail now wants to appeal through continued economic success, cutting taxes, highlighting policies aimed at ending social exclusion and attempting to position itself to be able, one day, to draw a line under the past.