Brian Cowen: "The Taoiseach has obtained a mandate two or three short months ago to lead this government in its third term. That's what he'll be doing. He has the support of his colleagues in so doing and we have to get on with running the country." September 2007

Dermot Ahern: "It's an effort to politically destabilise the Taoiseach, an honest and honourable man that most people understand he is. The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, everyone knows, has not a lavish lifestyle. He has never tried to self-enhance himself. He has an honest, simple enough lifestyle and you know the issue of the loans as we all know was at a time when he was in "nancial dif"culty and that's something he has already explained." September 2006.

Micheal Martin: "I am looking at the bigger picture. I am looking at a man who I have worked with for over 10 years at the Cabinet table who has never in my view made any decision that was not in the public interest, that was not with the common good in mind. I have never seen him take any decision in favour of any company, or in favour of any person."

September 2007 Mary Coughlan: "I think it's a bit inappropriate and disingenuous when we are actually talking about a particular time in a man's life which many people can empathise with, in other words a marital breakdown and the way in which someone deals with that." September 2007

Seamus Brennan: "I have worked with Bertie Ahern for 25 years, almost on a daily basis, and I have no reason to doubt his integrity. I worked with him longer than most. I know that his total interest is in public service and delivering public service and working for the country and for his party. It is for the tribunal to decide what is right or wrong. I am not going to sit and judge what is right or wrong in these matters. It is not my job to do that." September 2007

Willie O'Dea: "We need some objective debate about policies in order to make up our minds. And yet all the media is taken up with is an alleged 30 grand that somebody allegedly got or didn't get, or got in some way or didn't get in some other way, 15 years ago." May 2007

"I suppose jealousy will get me nowhere and unfortunately I'm not one of those politicians. Naturally, if I was sitting in my of"ce and some individual walked in with 300,000, that would be strange." September 2007

Mary Hanafin: "The questions that the Opposition asked were: who gave, how much and were there tax liabilities? And he's answered those three questions so that should be the end of it now. There is a genuine acceptance in the Irish public that he is a man of integrity, that he is not somebody who is caught in the trappings of power or of money, and so I think that hasn't affected people's con"dence in him or in the party." September 2006.

Eamon O'Cuiv: "I think what the Taoiseach has said quite clearly is that in hindsight he would have been happier to get Manchester United tickets than to get the dig-out he got from the friends which was given in good faith." September 2007 Brian Lenihan: "All of the facts were outlined before the last general election and the public made their minds up about it.

The Taoiseach is giving evidence at the tribunal and in no court case would a running commentary be allowed but because it is a tribunal this is allowed." September 2007 Lenihan also sparked controversy earlier this month when he said people were "turning off their radios", claiming the public were sick of the media's obsession with the payments to Bertie controversy.

Noel Dempsey: "What has happened over the four days [in the tribunal] is that the Taoiseach has been asked to explain events 13 years ago which he himself has accepted he would not do again if he could go back over it. The Taoiseach has explained the particular circumstances that pertained to these transactions. It was a particularly turbulent period in his own life on a personal basis and he has had to expose that to the world." September 2007

At a mid-1990s ardfheis, Bertie Ahern himself said, "Fianna Fail could not condone the practice of senior politicians seeking or receiving from a single donor large sums of money or services in kind."

When RTE's Aine Lawlor put Ahern's decade-old statement to Dempsey last week, he replied, "The Taoiseach made his comments at a stage when it became clear huge sums of money, we are talking in terms of eight or 10 million, were lodged to accounts of Charlie Haughey. What we are talking about here is friends of his, in a particularly dif"cult period of his lifetime, wanting to help him out."