Brian Cowen

While Lenihan was the front-man for the government last week, it was Cowen as taoiseach who ultimately made the call to go for the bank guarantee scheme. He acted decisively and showed courage and leadership when it was most required in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

He made a hugely impressive speech in Trinity College on Thursday night in which he laid down the law to the bankers and promised to take the "correct decisions for the people irrespective of the political consequences". Future prosperity, he said, would be put ahead of short-term popular appeal. Obviously he has to follow those words with action in the budget, but this is more like the Cowen we expected when he took over last summer.

Willie O'Dea

Mr Dependable for the government – when the going gets tough, Willie gets going. Always willing to go out and defend government policy, his knowledge of economics and figures made him the perfect spokesman for the government on TV and radio last week. Expect him to fill the same role in the wake of next week's budget.

It spoke volumes that it was O'Dea who was seated beside Brian Lenihan for much of the committee stage of the bill last Wednesday. He may also have played a key role in formulating policy behind the scenes.

Richard Bruton

Bruton rose to the occasion and showed that he knows his finance brief inside out. Although he always agreed in principle with the government's rescue plan, he was quick to point out how sketchy the details were on Tuesday and he delivered definite, to-the-point arguments throughout the Dáil debate. He may have strengthened the case for those in the party who argue that he should be the next leader.

It would be extremely unfair to Enda Kenny, though, to say that he was in Bruton's shadow last week. It was always going to be the finance spokesman's moment. Kenny did little wrong and was to the fore in highlighting potential concerns for customers of banks not covered by the state guarantee.

Joan Burton

Labour's finance spokeswoman spent much of the week deriding Mary O'Rourke's nephew, Brian Lenihan, but the 'Mammy' of Leinster House still heaped praise on Burton on RTÉ radio.

"I thought Joan Burton was terrific," said O'Rourke. "Her voice was getting hoarser but she was making it [her argument] strongly and with determination in a man's world, a man's world of finance. I sat back and said to myself, 'Fair dues to you, Joan'."

As numerous TDs engaged in political point-scoring, Burton stuck to the substantive issues and insisted that Lenihan include specific safeguards in the legislation. She has asserted herself as one of the most able performers in the Oireachtas.

Michael Noonan

A succession of Dáil backbenchers from all sides of the house waxed lyrical with populist arguments on the banks' bail-out during Wednesday's marathon committee stage debate.

Michael Noonan didn't. After a powerful performance during a debate on the cancer misdiagnosis debacle the previous week, Noonan gave another sterling display. He said more in a few sentences than most TDs said all day.

Noonan looked as if he might have been consigned to political oblivion on the night that he resigned as leader of Fine Gael after the party's calamitous general election in 2002. Now he is enjoying a deserved resurgence in his political fortunes. Form is temporary; class, however, is permanent.

The Ceann Comhairle

Despite initial fears that he was far too partisan to sit in the middle, John O'Donoghue is widely viewed as an innovative and effective ceann comhairle who is not afraid to tell his Fianna Fáil mates when to zip it. After Tanaiste Mary Coughlan directed a one-liner at Fine Gael on Thursday morning, O'Donoghue quickly warned her that "provocation is not allowed on the Order of Business."

However, his chairmanship of Wednesday's mammoth committee stage debate warrants criticism. When the Dáil was meant to be discussing specific proposed amendments to the bill, O'Donoghue allowed a chaotic and lengthy debate to develop, with some TDs comparing the situation to 1930s Germany and Mayo TD Michael Ring calling for bankers to be jailed.

not forgetting...
The Seanad

So Andy Warhol was right after all – everybody does get their 15 minutes of fame. Who would have believed it – the global financial markets awaiting the verdict of the usually wholly irrelevant Seanad? Ok, that's stretching things a tad, given that the outcome was hardly in doubt, but there is no question the Seanad took centre stage in the early hours of Thursday morning when the bill went into the upper house. And didn't the senators relish their few sleep-deprived hours in the spotlight? Returning to humdrum reality will be difficult. To paraphrase the post-World War I song title from the US, 'How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen gay Paree?'