The “Teflon Taoiseach” finally bowed to the inevitable today. Bertie Ahern will leave office next month after enduring a political death by a thousand cuts over his bizarre personal finances but staunchly denying that he has ever accepted corrupt illegal payments.

Mr Ahern was surrounded by loyal members of his Cabinet as he made the emotional statement, some of them visibly moved by the occasion.

There is little surprise in that: Ireland’s most successful leader since independence from Britain has long maintained an aura of invincibility in spite of the drawn out soap opera of his financial affairs, dirty laundry washed publicly through the Mahon Tribunal in a manner which no Taoiseach before him ever had to endure.

Mr Ahern was the protégé of Charles Haughey, who died in disgrace over the way in which he plundered the coffers of powerful friends to create a lifestyle which included French handmade Charvet shirts, yachts and stately homes.

Mr Haughey once called Mr Ahern “the most cunning of them all” – a compliment which his detractors chose to interpret as proof of a similar appetite for the finest things in life which could never be bought on a minister’s salary.

But the evidence tells a different story. Mr Ahern is Ireland’s Everyman writ large: until recently his favourite garment was a shapeless anorak, which he would don to make the short journey from his constituency home in north Dublin to Fagans bar, where he would chat about Manchester United over pints of Bass.

It was this simple life of the “Northsider” which lay at the heart of his appeal - as well as the enigma. The ordinary Irish have found it hard to believe that Mr Ahern was capable of accepting bribes, a charge which remains unproven.

However, enough strange behaviour has been filleted out of Mr Ahern’s accounts to fuel suspicions.

When he was finance minister in the 1990s he used to cash his salary cheques over the bar at Fagans – he didn’t have a bank account, he told the tribunal probing kickbacks for land redevelopment projects.

He admitted to accepting cash from friends in a spontaneous whip-round during a weekend in Manchester watching his beloved United. An explanation grudgingly offered in a tearful television interview was that he was going through a divorce. But later that alibi lost weight as more came out.

The final straw may have come with the prospect of questions in the Dail later today about more mysterious sterling payments into a building society account which Mr Ahern – who has insisted throughout that he is cooperating fully – had neglected to mention.

In the end, with a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty looming, Mr Ahern seems to have decided that it is in the best interests of all – including himself – that he goes now rather than stick to his promise to serve a full and final third term. This way he may yet be born again as the EU’s first president.

He has gone with enormous dignity and style, emphasising the great successes of his leadership – a peace settlement in Northern Ireland, a transformed economy – and insisting he has done nothing wrong in a manner which recalled his great predecessor Eamon de Valera, the founder of Fianna Fail, the Soldiers of Destiny.

De Valera, who also served three terms as Taoiseach, once famously said that whenever he wanted to know what the people of Ireland wanted he needed only to search his own heart.

Mr Ahern echoed that today when he insisted:”I know in my heart of hearts that I’ve done no wrong and wronged no-one.”

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