BEN DUNNE and I go back a long way. In the summer of 1971 we spent a hot Saturday afternoon pushing rails of clothes from the Dunnes Stores shop in George's Street in Dublin across the road to the Cassidy's store, which the company had recently taken over.
"Mister Bernard", as we were told to call him, bad rolled up his sleeves and got stuck into the work like the rest of us. But it all had the air of the young master strolling down from the manor and taking it into his head to help the peasants save the hay. The Dunnes were a dynasty and he was a prince.
We half hoped that at the end of the afternoon, with the sweat beginning to show through our grey nylon shop coats, he might reach into his pocket and say something like: "Look, that's something for yourself." We would smile gratefully and say "Thank you, big fella." But it never happened. We got the usual remuneration - there were no over time rates - of 15 pence an hour.
Similar thoughts must have crossed the minds of many Dunnes Stores employees this week. Checkout operators who earn £3.80 an hour, and the 90 per cent of the company's non management employees who do not have guarantees of full time work, must have been stunned by the revelation at the Dunnes payments tribunal of the impulsive generosity of their erstwhile employer.
The surprise may be all the greater because, when their union representatives entered gruelling negotiations with their employers, it was usually Noel Fox, the accountant who helped to disburse Ben Dunne's largesse, who was sitting across the table.
Dunnes Stores and Charles Haughey are recognisably products of the same world, branded with the same label. They both emerged from the industrial revolution of the 1960s, and it is worth noting that Ken Whitaker, the architect of that revolution who worked with Haughey in the Department of Finance, also wrote the Irish Times appreciation of Ben Dunne snr in 1983. They were both heavily involved with the same firm of accountants, Oliver Freaney, where Charles Haughey did his accountancy training and which is a critical part of the Dunnes operation.
And both favoured an autocratic style. In his fine booklet on the company, Dunnes Stores at the Crossroads, the business journalist Kyran Fitzgerald wrote: "Within a democratic society, Dunnes Stores has operated almost along dictatorial lines ... In effect the organisation has been run as a Stalinist command economy with power concentrated in the hands of two individuals" at the top.
In office Mr Haughey, too, operated a command economy. One of the funnier moments of the beef tribunal was Seamus Brennan's wide eyed description of the life of a junior minister in the government of 1987-1989, walking the corridors and knowing that at any moment Mr Haughey might get him into a corner and demand to know what be had done to justify his existence that day. In a sense, what is happening this week is a logical consequence of what happens when a supposedly democratic society retains centres of autocratic power.
BY far the most disturbing claim made at the tribunal so far is the evidence of Ben Dunne and Noel Fox that there was, in 1987, an attempt to put together a "handful or perhaps half a dozen people to contribute £150,000 each" to Mr Haughey.
If this is indeed the case (and of course we have not yet heard Mr Haughey's side of the story) it is significant because it was precisely in this period that the most controversial relationship between business and politics - that between Mr Haughey's minority Fianna Fail government on the one side and Goodman International on the other - was in its crucial phase.
In May 1987 Mr Haughey became directly involved in negotiations between Goodman International and the IDA, in which huge sums of money - up to £90 million - were being sought by the company. On May 18th Mr Larry Goodman, like Ben Dunne at a later date, called to see Mr Haughey in Kinsealy and had a long private discussion with him.
They had a second such meeting on June 15th, and another, almost certainly in August. There were further private meetings in 1988 between the two men on January 23rd at Kinsealy and on March 3rd and May 20th at Government Buildings. In 1989 there were two private meetings, on January 25th and February 11th.
There is, of course, absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing by either Mr Haughey or Mr Goodman connected with any of these meetings, and the beef tribunal found nothing to suggest that the granting of an immense amount of State benefits to Mr Goodman in this period was motivated by any kind of personal or political favouritism.
But, if the evidence of Ben Dunne and Noel Fox is accepted, Mr Haughey in this period "urgently required" money, and there was in 1987 at least a plan to approach a number of wealthy people to get it for him. It would be interesting to know whether or not Mr Goodman was ever asked to be part of the alleged consortium of donors.
Echoes of the beef tribunal may be heard, too, in the evidence that relates to the present Taoiseach. Mr Dunne's evidence that he gave John Bruton a cheque for £50,000 as a contribution to Fine Gael in April 1991 confirms the Taoiseach's indication to the Dail earlier this year that, in soliciting money from Ben Dunne, "I was in touch with him personally."
It is a pity, though, that Mr Bruton did not say that he personally solicited contributions for his party when, over a year later, in June 1992, he gave evidence to the beef tribunal.
In his direct evidence, Mr Bruton was asked: "Are you as leader, or other politicians within your party, made aware of the particular political contributions made by a company or person?"
He replied: "No. Now, that is not to say that one might not on a random basis become aware of contributions that are made by particular individuals, but there is no systematic informing of politicians of contributions... not even the party leader of the time."
LATER Mr Bruton said that while he might have received contributions personally at election times, "these contributions were not sought by me at all, entirely unsolicited, but people would just make contributions which would be used towards the local campaign, or passed on to party headquarters, depending." Yet it appears from the evidence this week that the £50,000 contribution from Ben Dunne was neither random nor unsolicited.
With such awkward questions still in the air, the least that the public has a right to expect is that the general election, whenever it comes, will be fought under the provisions of the Electoral Bill, so that there will be at least some degree of openness about these matters.
If, on the other hand, an election is to be fought under the old system that has allowed the biggest two parties to clear debts of £4.5 million since 1992, we must be told in detail where all of that money came from. The days when the public can be treated like Dunnes Stores employees are, at last, coming to a close.