The bad guys never had it so bad, by all accounts. Crime became the sexiest of all election issues. The new Government promised to clean up the mean streets. And an estimated bill of almost £120,000 a day in Garda overtime was accepted without a whimper from the opposition.
But the year when the authorities stood up to the organised crime world of guns and drugs was also a year marked by huge public scandals - a former Taoiseach and a former Minister were found nestling deep inside the pockets of a former supermarket boss. Senior staff in a State body were blamed for the infection of 1,600 people with the Hepatitis C virus. And while both stories dominated the year's news, there has yet to be a criminal prosecution in relation to them.
The Dunnes Payments to Politicians Tribunal lifted a stone under which a large pot of money was hidden. Details of the financial transactions of Charles Haughey and Michael Lowry revealed a startling amount of offshore money owned by Irish nationals sloshing around on the Cayman Islands.
The Ansbacher millions, and their last known figure of £38 million in 1989, were quickly scuttled out of sight by their owners when Mr Justice Brian McCracken and his team moved in.
With bated breath, people listened to Charles Haughey deny any knowledge of £1.3 million he received from Ben Dunne. The McCracken team packed its bags and travelled to London and the Caymans to dig out the evidence it needed to prove that Haughey got the money.
Finally, it was the telephone log of Ben Dunne's solicitor, Noel Smyth, which proved that Haughey had received the money and with a terse statement that came as near to humility as he ever has, he came out with his hands up. Taxpayers' money funded the efficient work of the tribunal team - work which would not have been necessary if Haughey had admitted getting the money.
Haughey's critics bayed for his blood and demanded that he be made pay for the costs of the tribunal and others represented at it. Yet by the end of the year the Attorney General said Haughey could not be called to account for the costs caused by his non-cooperation.
The Government promised a change in the law to allow for claims against those who obstruct the work of a tribunal. But Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats had already decided not to investigate the legality and ownership of the £38 million in the so-called Ansbacher deposits.
The next inquiry into payments to Haughey and to Michael Lowry, chaired by Mr Justice Michael Moriarty, will confine itself to payments made to Ministers or public servants.
The financial affairs of Haughey and Lowry are also in the hands of the Revenue Commissioners, who must gather their own evidence for any prosecution.
However the Moriarty Tribunal may be unable to investigate key financial aspects as the Central Bank is expected to challenge the legal authority of the tribunal to investigate its supervision of the Guinness & Mahon bank in Dublin.
The Moriarty Tribunal also lacks the large amount of information given to the McCracken Tribunal by Ben Dunne.
But Moriarty is not the only investigation we can look forward to in 1998.
In November, it was announced that gardai would interview former senior employees of the Blood Transfusion Board as part of an investigation into the infection of blood with the hepatitis C virus.
The investigation has been promised "whatever resources are necessary" to pursue a prosecution. But it still remains the case that the burden of proof is high, with criminal liability needing to be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
The announcement follows a year of highs and lows when, in March, Mr Justice Thomas Finlay published his report into the hepatitis C scandal, described by Michael Noonan as "one of the worst public health scandals in the history of the State".
In unprecedented terms, the judge named senior people who bore some responsibility for the contamination.
Dr Jack O'Riordain (83), former national director of the BTSB, bore the "major responsibility" for the infection of Anti-D with the hepatitis C virus, the report said.
Ms Cecily Cunningham, principal biochemist at the time the Anti-D infection happened "bore an important and serious responsibility" for the product being infected. She ignored warning signs of a positive Hepatitis C test "due apparently to indifference".
Dr Terry Walsh - the most junior medical officer at the BTSB at the time - was found to have neglected his duty when he failed to recommend against using patient X's plasma as soon as he learned of her jaundice and hepatitis.
When the Finlay report was published a source in the rainbow coalition spoke about its referral to the Director of Public Prosecutions. "This was a great tragedy where a whole lot of people were affected, where the damage could not be undone and where uncertainty contributed to the pain. Because of this, it was felt important that the report should not simply be left lie."
But while the Government was seen to be doing something the DPP's decision not to prosecute came as no surprise.
"Expecting a report like this to be the basis for a criminal prosecution is like looking at a fish and expecting it to fly," one tribunal expert said when the report was published. "It might, but for a very short distance."
The work of Finlay and McCracken - two excellent tribunals into hepatitis C and the Dunnes payments - have both been flying fish. With McCracken, we marvelled at the revelations, the intrigue and the tales of bank drafts on the doorstep after tea in Kinsealy. In the case of hepatitis C, those who were infected and the families of those who had died felt they had finally found out what happened. But both fish fell to earth.
The flying powers of the next tribunal into payments to politicians and the Garda investigation into the hepatitis C scandal remain to be seen.