The DIRT inquiry represents the most exhausting 14 months in my long political career. I don't think I would ever want to repeat it, yet they have also been the most rewarding.

Contrary to a widespread critical perception of politicians, most of those who are in politics are there solely for the purpose of doing public service.

In other countries, and probably most notably the United States, the nobility of public service is widely recognised. In the US there is a great tradition of highly paid professionals and scions of wealthy families giving a few years of their life, at considerable expense to themselves, to serving in public life. Their sole motivation is to make a contribution to the improvement of the lot of their fellow man.

Many who are not so highly paid also do likewise.

Yet because of a series of events which have come to light in the last 10 years, any suggestion that Irish politicians are purely motivated by the noble calling of public service would be met with bellicose laughter. If you suggested that they did it at enormous family and financial sacrifice you would meet howls of derision. This, I suspect, would be all the more so among the young, especially the educated young.

Yet this is the truth of the matter. Most of my colleagues in Dail Eireann are there to help to improve society and to make Ireland, and the world, a better place to live in. Many also lose out financially by being in the Dail.

Beef, Telecom, Greencore, hepatitis C, planning, payments to politicians, and now DIRT are a litany of explanations for the deep-seated cynicism about politics among our people. What idealistic young person would be attracted to such a profession with such an ignoble appearance?

The tragedy is that this perception is such a travesty of the truth. Yet it is understandable.

All of the great things that have happened to our country in the last 15 years, delivered by politicians, are set at naught because of these scandals. And great things have happened!

On Northern Ireland peace has been achieved by a long succession of committed taoisigh and foreign ministers. From the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, negotiated by Garret FitzGerald and Peter Barry, successive steps have been negotiated by their successors, Charles Haughey, Albert Reynolds, John Bruton and Bertie Ahern, and their respective foreign ministers.

On the economy the generosity and wisdom of Alan Dukes's Tallaght Strategy and Ray Mac Sharry's unflinching determination to do whatever was necessary, as finance minister in 1987, was the foundation stone on which their successors have so successfully built. Political consensus on economic matters has continued since the Tallaght Strategy, and with it the social consensus with unions and employers which are the twin pillars upon which our economic success is built.

But the scandals have obscured these great achievements, and it is almost as if politicians had nothing to do with them. But there is a certain justice in this state of affairs because all the scandals have a common strand. All of them represent a failure of political and parliamentary accountability.

That is why I believe that the most important recommendations of the DIRT inquiry, so far as the future is concerned, are those dealing with the reform and modernisation of the Oireachtas. These are the changes which hold out most hope for the future. This arises from the reality that all the scandals happened under the noses of all the parliamentarians of our time, including my own.

There are certain present-day realities which must be faced. The Dail is organised in a completely out-of-date way. It badly needs urgent reorganisation. Question Time, once the great tool of parliamentary accountability, has descended into an ineffective, unproductive, virtually unattended daily session. Fewer questions than ever before are reached despite the fact that fewer deputies than ever before bother to attend.

Not so long ago ail) there would have been a hullabaloo if government sought to guillotine debate on a bill. Now it is almost a daily occurrence and, worse, it is normally by agreement between the whips. There is no better recipe for defective ill-considered legislation, and thus the loopholes and scandals of tomorrow are sourced.

It is the whips, rather than the chair, who decide which of their deputies speak in debates and in which order. This, in particular, leads to the daily scandal seen on TV of a virtually empty Dail chamber, as deputies due to speak go into the chamber just a few minutes before the time appointed by the whips. Not long ago deputies had to sit in the chamber to listen to the debate and hope to catch the eye of the chair.

THE present farce of deputies addressing empty seats has had the additional impact of greatly reducing the quality of Dail speeches, as great oratory or great research has no impact on empty seats and in turn the reportage thereof has greatly diminished. Parliamentary reputations, unlike in the past, are no longer made in the Dail chamber, and this has impoverished the parliamentary tradition.

Meanwhile, across the road in Kildare House, committees meet at the same time as the Dail, thus further diminishing the attendance in both. The sight of TDs scurrying backwards and forwards across Kildare Street is the awful reality. And worse, meetings of parliamentary parties are also held in parallel.

That is why the recommendations of the DIRT inquiry regarding Oireachtas reform are, in my opinion, the most important for the future. This, based on my premise that an out-of-date and under-resourced structure, which is the reality of the Dail, has been the one common contributing cause to all the recent scandals, including the DIRT scandal. Thus the seeds of the present cynicism were sown.

The modernisation and restructuring of the Dail itself, if achieved as a result of this inquiry, would be the most lasting contribution to a restoration of faith in the political process. Public service could once again be seen as a noble calling to which good people would be attracted.

A modern, well-resourced, efficient Dail geared to holding ministers and departments and the other agencies of State to account would be a big contribution to the future of our country. I hope that the DIRT inquiry will be seen as the beginning of a new era for the Oireachtas and, if so, the exhausting effort will be more than justified.

Jim Mitchell TD is chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and the DIRT inquiry