He still presides over a hugely successful economy. Few policy areas are giving enough trouble to allow the opposition gather any head of stream. With plenty of money, the Fianna FailPD coalition has been able to temporarily buyoff, if not necessarily solve, problems in key areas like health, property and childcare. Incumbency has been a big help, and Ahern has also been assisted by an opposition that lacks internal cohesion and seems to have a credibility problem with the voters.

Yet despite his continued political success, 2006 has been a difficult year for Ahern. Indeed, the year that is ending has given a hugely revealing insight into him.

The recent report from the Moriarty tribunal provided a glimpse into Ahern's modus operandi when discussing how in 1989 Charlie Haughey made off with £50,000 of a £75,000 donation to Fianna Fail. Several years later, Ahern spoke with the donor, but apparently the financial discrepancy was not discussed. As the tribunal chairman, Michael Moriarty, put it, "Either those concerned were deeply embarrassed by what occurred and chose to adopt a diplomatic approach to the issue or there was a tacit understanding between them that the matter had arisen in a former era and that its details were best left undisturbed."

A policy of leaving things undisturbed also applied to the payments which Ahern received in the early 1990s from friends and business people. He skipped around the two Drumcondra payments . . . they were from people he knew who wanted to help him out over his marital separation. But we enter 2007 with real questions remaining about Ahern's 1993 adventure in Manchester.

He attended a function at the Four Seasons Hotel with confusion about whether he addressed the gathering, who the people attending were and how a whip-round which produced stg£8,000 came to be organised.

We may hear more of this unusual episode but for now a large section of those voters . . . it seems . . . still love Bertie. He's the separated, GAA-loving, Dalymountattending politician with a daughter who's a chick-lit best-selling novelist and a son-in-law who is a member of a boyband. He is Everyman. But after nine years as Taoiseach it is fair to say that Ahern is still also a political enigma. He has few loyalists within his own party.

Fewer still profess to know him very well. The key to his personal political survival is that he remains more popular than the political party he leads.