There is a real feeling that they are testing public opinion and possible political gain, rather than being guided by a strong sense of principle.

Neither Enda Kenny nor Pat Rabbitte has shown any real leadership in the way they have stumbled and prevaricated.

It is true that, when the news broke, it was important that they did not rush in like fools looking for the head of the longest-serving and most popular Taoiseach since de Valera without good reason.

But at this stage, either they believe Ahern should resign or they don't. They should say so unequivocally. The time for the pretence of giving a nice guy a chance to explain himself is over.

Of course, whatever Kenny or Rabbitte say has no real consequence because, in the numbers game of the Dail, they have no real power. But they could at least act like the principled leaders they are trying to convince us to entrust them to be after the next election.

The real power lies with the PDs and Michael McDowell. It is hardly comforting to anyone to know that the minister for justice and master of all the high moral ground he surveys never had any problem leaking information about journalist Frank Connolly's passport (purely in the public interest of course) or about washing his hands of who was really to blame when it looked like child rapists were going to walk free.

McDowell is also, of course, the minister who believed we did not need a privacy law, but then succumbed to the pique of his Fianna Fail cabinet colleagues and, with no sense of humility, introduced a draconian privacy law as part of our updated libel legislation. Under its proposed terms, none of the information we are now reading would ever have got into the public domain.