LAST Wednesday, two senior, sober politicians accused the Taoiseach in the Dail of committing perjury.

Eamon Gilmore told the House that Bertie Ahern had given a "cock and bull" story to the Planning tribunal.

Enda Kenny said he doubted whether the Manchester payment or the dig-outs from friends ever happened. "In my opinion, they are fictitious, " Kenny said.

It was the first time in a generation that a charge of such seriousness was made against a serving Taoiseach. The charge from both men was issued without rancour. Gilmore, in particular, was measured in his tone. He was reluctant to point the finger at a man who is personally popular with both politicians and the public.

Nobody on the government side railed against the suggestions that Ahern had lied. There was no charge that the two men were abusing privilege in the House. The lack of response spoke volumes. Privately, many on the government benches don't believe Ahern either.

"These things matter, " Gilmore declared.

Quite possibly, they don't to a large slice of the population. People lead busy lives, running around in a bustling economy over which Ahern has presided for the last 10 years. Everything is rosy, but brittle. So people prefer to turn away and concentrate on the "real issues" which impact directly.

The leader of a country lying on oath does matter, but its effects are felt beneath ground level, corroding the foundations on which a democracy is built.

Where, for example, stands the moral authority of the law if the elected leader can abuse it with impunity? The notion that we are all equal before the law is thrown out the window of the highest office in the state.

Politicians have long decried a growing cynicism about their trade, yet the fallout from Bertie and his 300,000 can't but fuel cynicism, eroding the standing of politics further, dragging it lower towards the gutter.

Even more worrying is the predominance of spin over substance that has been to the fore in this whole affair. For a year before he gave evidence, Ahern and his colleagues spun and spun relentlessly. He was given the benefit of the doubt.

Then, over four days, the Taoiseach was treated to an exposition of the facts, and the spin began to unravel. His changing story found a pattern.

He made an unequivocal declaration about where he got the stacks of cash and what he did with it. In all four transactions examined by the tribunal in these hearings, the bank records didn't tally with his story. So he changed the story each time, conveniently to a version that couldn't be checked against bank records.

The facts show that he handed over his own records reluctantly, and in some cases only admitted to transactions after the tribunal's investigations uncovered them. The details he provided under oath of the Manchester whipround defy belief, as do the details of Mick Wall and his suitcase of cash. Ahern's purported memory of all these events might be believable if it belonged to the village idiot, or was born of a brain ravaged from drink or drugs.

Yet last week, freed from the shackles of unvarnished facts, he was back spinning, joking about foreign currencies, and sure, don't we all change our stories and I'm only a simple workin' man trying to do my best.

These things matter. Ahern is a practising Catholic, seen among the faithful as a bulwark against what he himself describes as "aggressive secularism". He has a certain standing with the 50% of people who still attend mass weekly.

Before giving evidence, he placed his hand on the Bible . . . by his own choice . . . and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

If Gilmore and most of the country are correct, then Ahern showed contempt for the holy book, deferring instead to the higher power of expediency. If he was lying to the extent that Gilmore and Kenny stated, then we're not talking about the odd porkie, but a whole fictitious construction.

These things matter. Whatever about the office of Taoiseach, the standing of the executive has been diminished by the blatherings of defence issued by ministers.

Conor Lenihan told Mark Little on Prime Time that he would not remember being handed a suitcase with thirty thousand in cash 14 years ago, nor would he remember picking up fifty big ones in cash from a bank. Conor must have led a really colourful life back then if such transactions were routine and easily forgotten.

On the Newstalk 106 lunchtime show, Eamon O'Cuiv compared Mick Wall's suitcase of thirty grand to the remittances that immigrants used to send home to impoverished family and friends.

"With immigrants, there was a culture of supporting people in need (back home), " the minister told Eamon Keane. O'Cuiv, a born-again Man Of The West, does scant justice to the people he purports to represent with that blather.

And then there is Willie O'Dea. On Wednesday, Willie declared that he implicitly believes everything Ahern told the tribunal.

Well, Willie, let's look at one little episode from Bertie's Wild Years. In January 1995, Ahern took fifty grand in cash from an account and placed it in his safe. In June and December of that year, he lodged �10,000 and �20,000 sterling in his account. This, he says, was sterling he bought with the fifty grand sometime between January and March that year. His bank in O'Connell Street recorded no such transactions. The suspicion is the money came from somewhere else.

On the third day of his testimony, Ahern told the tribunal that he now couldn't remember buying the sterling and maybe he sent somebody out for it, and perhaps it was bought in instalments. By the fourth day, this scenario was elevated to be "most likely". No bank records can dispute such a story, and guess what, Bertie can't identify this trusted lieutenant who was dispatched on a number of occasions to change wads of cash into sterling.

Do you believe that? Willie certainly does.

The impression lingers that if Bertie said the cow jumped over the moon, Willie would come out to declare that he spotted the animal in mid-flight.

Other ministers haven't been as silly, but just as contemptuous of the public in defending the indefensible, while privately, most of them don't believe their leader's tales. The result is a further erosion of the standing of high office, one more leap down the road to total cynicism about the concept of public service.

These things matter. Poor Ivor Callaly got the bullet for a paint job and a few bits and bobs.

He didn't live up to the high standards Ahern demanded of his deputies. Poor Ned O'Keeffe forgot to declare an interest in pig slurry during a Dail debate, and he was unceremoniously dumped. Their crimes appear little more than misdemeanours compared to the smell emanating from the Taoiseach. Then there was Bev, she who facilitated tax evasion. Her crime was deemed so bad that Ahern had her thrown out of not just the parliamentary party, but the whole organisation. This, from the man who says his friends wouldn't allow him repay an alleged tax-efficient loan until it became public knowledge last year. If he is lying, then the most benign scenario is that he hid a large sum of money from the Revenue in the years immediately after he, as Finance minister, brought in a tax amnesty. Is it any wonder that he is inching Bev back into the fold now that his own tax issues appear so delicately balanced?

Liam Lawlor, if he were still with us, would be getting great mileage out of the last few weeks.

Here's what Bertie told the Dail about Liam at the height of the latter's travails with the tribunal: "It is unacceptable that people who have held high office and enjoyed a high degree of public trust should give evidence that is 'unacceptable and untrue' or deliberately conceal vital information from this House or from a tribunal established by this House."

With his moral authority now shot, we can take it that for the remainder of his tenure, Ahern will insist on nothing more than half-assed standards from his deputies. How could he do otherwise and retain a straight face?

These things matter. When those at the top fail to live up to basic standards, the attitude trickles down through an organisation. There are thousands of public servants who take pride in their jobs, for example, treating the expenditure of public money as if it was their own. Why would anyone bother to do anything more than the minimum when those at the top have scant regard for basic standards?

In extreme circumstances, countries run by corrupt regimes end up bankrupt. The government of this state isn't corrupt in that sense, but the principal is the same.

Bertie Ahern no longer has the basic moral authority required of the elected leader in a democracy, and his ministers are backing him, irrespective of their better judgement of the facts.

Wednesday should have been a day of great pride for the Taoiseach. Three election victories make him the most popular politician in a generation.

He deserves credit for that, and his achievements, particularly in Northern Ireland. He should have been basking in the glow.

But questions hang like dark clouds over his career and legacy.

Where did he get the money?

What, if anything, did he do for it?

Did he lie with impunity in evidence to a sworn inquiry? These things do matter.