The Government didn't fall this week because Bertie Ahern isn't Albert Reynolds, Mary Harney and the PDs aren't Dick Spring and Labour looking for a head, and Charlie McCreevy was around to act as go between. It's the little things that bring you down, Albert said when his government fell over the Brendan Smith affair in 1994. On Tuesday afternoon, when the Cabinet still hadn't met and the Tanaiste was closeted with her colleagues, it looked very much as if we were heading for a third election on June 11th. The failure of the Taoiseach to tell the Dail about his representations in the Philip Sheedy case was bad enough, but his remarks at Government Buildings on Monday night turned a serious row into a full-blown crisis.
The Taoiseach has been damaged by the events of the past week. Within his own party there is a feeling that he messed up, nearly brought the Government down over an issue on which he did nothing wrong, and that his many references to his actions muddied rather than cleared the waters. Indeed, taken with the evidence of Dermot Ahern at the Flood Tribunal this week, the FF party itself has been damaged - many now see it as less than open and transparent and at worst, prone to cronyism - along with the stability of the Coalition.
As for Charlie McCreevy, he and his fans have always maintained that had he been in the country, rather than abroad on business, when relations broke down between Reynolds and Spring in November 1994, it wouldn't have been terminal. He and Mary Harney brokered the first FF/PD coalition between Charlie Haughey and Des O`Malley in 1989. That old friendship proved useful this time, too, as did the fact that another friend, James McDaid, was in Donegal with the Tanaiste when the Taoiseach's remarks hit the headlines and was able to tip off his cabinet colleagues on the extent of the crisis about to hit them.