Bertie Ahern as serving minister for finance in 1994 accepted a personal payment of £8,000 for a speech he says he gave about the performance of the Irish economy to a group of businessmen in Manchester. This was wrong.

It doesn't matter that he had no tax liability on the sterling earned in those days.

It doesn't matter that the watershed (for politicians) McCracken tribunal report condemning all payments to serving politicians . . . and particularly those in high office . . . had yet to be written. It doesn't matter that he may find a way of showing that the payment may not have breached the ethical guidelines for serving ministers, only the spirit. It doesn't matter even, as we now hear, that there is a conflict over whether he spoke or not.

For a serving minister to accept such a substantial amount of money for an afterdinner . . . appearance, shall we say . . . organised by an unnamed " business organisation, " is completely unacceptable.

The Taoiseach has promised that he will explain everything to the Dail on Tuesday.

His story will have to be good because even the many supporters who have been trundled out in his defence, from Brian Cowen to Brian Lenihan, are starting to look very shaky as they try to defend the indefensible.

The two payments in December 1993 ( 22,500) and Christmas 1994 ( 16,500) from the Drumcondra cronies were, we were asked to swallow amid the tears of the Bryan Dobson interview, neither payment nor gift, but a "dig-out" in the form of "a loan" . . . a "debt of honour" to help a virtually homeless Bertie find his feet after his separation.

This newspaper still questions why so much was needed for a man who, on his own admission, had £50,000 in savings, an authorised bank loan, an apartment to live in above his constituency office, a £75,000 salary, a state car and state driver and generous expenses, but we accept that the general mood has been one of forgiveness.

The credibility of the Taoiseach is now stretched to breaking point as he tries to cast the payment for his Manchester speech as a gift, and one he received as a private individual and not in his capacity as minister.

Questions about this engagement are bubbling up all the time. Manchester businessman John Kennedy describes a whipround and says the money was neither a donation nor a loan and that the Taoiseach did not even speak.

Ahern, on the other hand, has spoken of there being "no official script, " but confirming that he "spoke at the function."

Are these two men describing the same dinner?

The Taoiseach has had two chances to get his explanation right on this question. He has messed up badly on both.

This newspaper said last week of the details of the Drumcondra whip-round "Excuse us, Taoiseach, but it IS our business."

We say the same of the Manchester payment. When exactly did these functions take place? Who organised them, and in particular the engagement the Taoiseach was paid for? Why? Who organised the "collection"? Why was it paid into the Taoiseach's personal account? Was this the total sum collected, or did the Taoiseach get a proportion of the total?

Based on the answers we have so far, even from Bertie Ahern himself, he has been sorely compromised. No serving minister can accept payments as an officeholder.

It gives us no pleasure to say it of such a great public servant as Bertie Ahern, but his credibility has been seriously undermined.