There was plenty to be said too about the cowardice of the opposition in failing to deal with the ongoing controversy. Trevor Sargent was the only party leader to try and get to grips with it. His attitude contrasted with the admitted cowardice of Pat Rabbitte who reminded us that the last time he took up the issue of the Taoiseach's finances, in the autumn, his poll ratings plummeted. At some point soon, Rabbitte is going to have to get a bit more talkative, however. If nothing else, the majority of voters who believe he will do a deal with Fianna Fail after the election will be wondering about his attitude to serving in government with a Taoiseach who has so many skeletons in his very expensive closets.

The fallout from Vincent Browne's hamfisted intervention on Thursday suggests that such cowardice mightn't be entirely out of place. On first listen, on Sean O'Rourke's radio programme, the encounter seemed like a confusing match-up between a showman and a charlatan. When you saw it later on television, however, it was clear that it may have been a mutually beneficial meeting of minds. Certainly it was a win-win situation for all concerned. Browne got to hijack an election campaign and win publicity for himself and his magazine while the Taoiseach got to look strong and in command for the first time in a week.

The matey conversation which was subsequently recorded between the two men for Browne's radio show only deepened the suspicion that their confrontation had no real journalistic purpose.

When Browne went on radio on Friday morning and said that the Taoiseach had done very well under questioning, what some journalists had been describing as an extraordinary press conference on Thursday revealed itself merely to be a glorified back-scratching exercise;

one which, judging by reaction to radio phone-ins, probably did the Taoiseach more good than harm.

Kenny and Rabbitte will be acutely conscious of this, as they will of the fact that they don't know precisely who is responsible for the constant dripfeed of revelations, big and small, about Ahern's finances. Even those of us who would like to see Fianna Fail drummed out of office can't be entirely comfortable about the idea of some unseen, unknown, behindthe-scenes force using pet newspapers and journalists to disrupt, define and possibly determine a general-election campaign. Without knowing who exactly is doing the leaking, the Rainbow leaders are probably right to avoid this particular fight and concentrate on issues and policies.

So far, they are doing well. They are being seen and heard and are being held accountable, unlike so many Fianna Fail ministers who, in keeping with the theme of the week, have hidden away like cowards from the many debates that need to be heard in their particular areas of responsibility.

The names of Dick Roche, the minister for the environment, and Martin Cullen, the minister for transport, immediately spring to mind. Both men, one presumes, gave thanks every day last week that the Taoiseach called the election when he did. Had Ahern not slipped into the Aras on Sunday, Roche and Cullen would have been involved in the biggest story of the last seven days, one which would have brought up all sorts of uncomfortable memories about Fianna Fail's uncanny ability to waste taxpayers' money and arrogant refusal to listen to people with opposing views.

Six years ago, government researchers reported that the area around the Hill of Tara in Co Meath was made up of a "mosaic of monuments" and should be regarded as an interconnected archaeological landscape.

Advisors to the National Roads Authority, currently involved in a programme of cultural vandalism at Tara, where it is building the M3 motorway, warned that the monuments around Tara "must be seen in the context of an intact archaeological landscape, which should not under any circumstances be disturbed. . ."

Despite these warnings from its own people, and appeals from very many archaeologists and historians around the world who asked that the M3 be routed away from Tara, the government decided to go ahead with its favoured route.

Last February, a site of major archaeological significance was found at Lismullin, on the Tara complex. Under the 2004 National Monuments Act, Dick Roche should have ordered that work on the site stop immediately, but instead activity (which I pass on the bus every day) seemed to increase. Last weekend, Martin Cullen arrived on the scene like a harbinger of doom to turn the sod. The following day, work on the Lismullin site was halted, the significance of the find having become too obvious to ignore any longer.

The small crew of activists and campaigners who have kept the M3 issue in the public eye, even when the ruination of the Hill of Tara area seemed inevitable in recent months, have received a huge fillip from the find but the one thing that they haven't been able to do so far is get a response from Cullen or Roche as to what happens next.

Roche is the more relevant of the two at the moment as he could give the site, and the whole Hill of Tara complex, the highest level of statutory protection, a decision which would mean the M3 would have to be rerouted.

The concern is that with minds focused elsewhere, he will consult half-heartedly with the necessary officials, announce that the site is not so important and destroy it. That would be the cowardly thing to do . . .

but should we really expect anything else?