Three hours later, in the Dáil, as the move was characterised to the Taoiseach by independent TD Mattie McGrath as evidence of a "cosy cartel", the Taoiseach again said he was in the dark on the secondment.

"I am not familiar with the arrangements between the Department of Health and TCD and was not involved, one way or another, in the decision by the Department of Health to create this post on public health and pandemic preparedness and second the CMO to it. That is what I understand of it from the Department of Health.

I had no hand, act or part in it."

Earlier that day, the Taoiseach had sat at Cabinet with his Health Minister Stephen Donnelly but could not have looked to him for illumination because, as was revealed later in the week, Mr Donnelly was unaware of the specifics of how the Chief Medical Officer would leave his Department in the midst of a global pandemic until he read it in the newspapers.

But the specifics, we were told were irrelevant. What mattered was that Dr Holohan was staying in the public sector, as we were reminded by senior minister after senior minister.

Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys said it is better to see Dr Holohan remain in the public sector than to be lost to a private company and that the issue of who pays his TCD salary "doesn't really matter to me".

However, she also acknowledged the situation "could have been handled better".

Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said the country is “fortunate” that Tony Holohan is choosing to stay as an asset for the state.

"The fact that we are effectively going to benefit as a state from Tony Holohan in Trinity College is a good thing,” he said.

Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien echoed the sentiment saying that he "fully supports the retention of Mr Holohan" in the public sector.

Besides, said Mr Donnelly, what was the fuss? Isn't it all just one big pot of taxpayer's money?

"Let's break it down — if the department were to pay or Trinity were to pay, it's all public money," the Health Minister said to RTÉ's Morning Ireland.

It's a taxpayer-funded post and what's important here is he's not getting paid any more money."

Just 48 hours later, Mr Donnelly's boss decided that the important thing was, in fact, the process of the appointment and paused it, pending more information.

The apparent volte-face seemed to catch some by surprise. In an industrial estate on the Naas Road, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar told journalists it was the right move, but he was unclear on some of the specifics given that the Taoiseach had made his announcement in Helsinki just 40 minutes previously.

"Nobody in government is happy," Mr Varadkar told journalists, but denied he'd been led up a garden path by the initial announcement of Dr Holohan's departure.

If Mr Varadkar believes that, Mr Donnelly may wonder if he was the one being led. 

At the time, he was quoted in a press release wishing Dr Holohan “all the best in this new and exciting chapter in his career”. 

Since then, it has emerged that he didn't know about the specifics of the move and that this was a "solo run" by senior officials including his Secretary General Robert Watt.

While Mr Varadkar sought to put distance between this incident and the botched appointment of Katherine Zappone as a UN envoy last summer, it is fair to ask if anything was learned from that fiasco. 

Mr Watt is not a politician and it is not his job to protect the government from criticism. But he is a senior civil servant - one of the best paid in Europe, in fact - and it is reasonable to expect that he would alert the Minister for Health of all of the details of the CMO's leaving during a pandemic.

To not do so raises the question of who is in charge at the Department of Health? Most people understand the power that Secretaries General wield and that it can often transcend electoral politics, where ministers might come and go. 

But having endured major scrutiny about his own appointment, Mr Watt cannot be so insulated from the public mood as to have not considered this worthy of a mention to the Minister. 

The Minister, too, must answer questions, too. Did he ask for any details of Mr Holohan's appointment? 

Was he aware that €187,000 of his Department's budget - the cost of approximately four nurses - was being spent to give a university a free member of staff?

This government's weakness, time and time again, has been an inability to spot obvious potholes, and thus it has proven again. 

While the appointment will likely go ahead - through some fudge of an agreement on who will pay - it has been overshadowed in a way that could very easily have been avoided.