Considering how often the public's right to know is used as an excuse for ferreting out the trivia of people's private lives, it's astonishing how many bigger issues are never given an airing.
Only the other day I heard from a grizzled member of the Doheny and Nesbitt school, complaining about how little the public knew of economic and monetary union, towards which we're galloping at a great rate.
As for the Amsterdam Treaty, on which we're to vote in the spring, the official publication A New Treaty For Europe has only begun to be circulated. I hope it's sent far and wide. At present only my friend Patrick Smyth in Brussels and someone in a darkened room in Iveagh House seem to know what's going on.
But is this so surprising? You may still recall an issue on which a few of us voted on the day of the presidential election. Cabinet confidentiality should have been of interest to everyone: it is, after all, the public's right to know. And it's certainly of special interest to journalists and politicians. Yet it was to all intents and purposes invisible.
You may say that this way of conducting - and covering - public affairs is a habit that has grown on us. Once upon a time there was just one big issue, independence: all others were, in the current lingo, set aside.
After independence, security and conformity went hand in hand. The less said the better. It was inadvisable to question an order which, apart from independence, hadn't been questioned for generations.
The media were naturally suspect.
Many on the right still believe in a conspiracy of liberal and left-leaning activists with like-minded journalists and broadcasters. All bent on conning the electorate into accepting the need for change, the more radical the better.
The evidence is against it. Put simply, if there were a conspiracy then the left, the liberals and the journalists turned out to be very poor conspirators indeed.
It took over 20 years from the Supreme Court's decision in the McGee case to the point at which condoms became generally available; almost 30 years from the first questioning of the ban on divorce to its removal from the Constitution. and then only after two referendums.
Homosexual acts between consenting adults were made legal after a series of actions in the courts. The first was in the early 1970s.
The decision of the European Court of Human Rights was finally implemented by the Oireachtas, under threat of Ireland's expulsion from the Council of Europe, in 1993.
Whatever you may think of their merits, these changes were neither precipitate nor conspiratorial.
As for the debate on abortion, it began 15 years ago with an attempt by the opponents of abortion to make change impossible; and it will end, who knows how soon, when the electorate recognises that change is unavoidable.
What all of this shows is that it has taken us a hell of a long time to get used to debate and compromise; to the reality that we're not all of one mind, or bound by a single set of beliefs; to the realisation that it's for politics to help us live together, not to impose our views on everyone else.
The media have played a part in this development. But it's not the role the conspiracy theorists suspect.
Nor is it the role described by Joe Lee in Damien Kiberd's Media In Ireland:
"Something akin to having privileged access to a pulpit in the corner of every living room in the country. It is therefore crucial in a society that purports to cherish democratic pluralism that the pulpit should not be programmed in a particular direction."
The trouble is we've been used to pulpits which were programmed in a particular direction, which were neither shared nor open to question and which gave off a whiff of smug indifference to the beliefs and feelings of others.
The result is that people who've suddenly discovered that it's possible to answer back are apt to dismiss church, politics and media alike. Lumping the best and worst of each to damn all three.
If blame attaches to the media, it's not for forcing change on an unwilling populace but for failing to ask awkward questions, even when given a lead by turbulent priests or courageous politicians; failing, too, to ask questions of ourselves.
John Kelly once criticised Conor Cruise O'Brien for being unable to pass a sleeping dog without having a kick at it. Well, there are times when it seems we're in danger of being smothered by sleeping dogs.
When have you last come across a discussion of this State's Northern policy?
I know we can't expect Bertie Ahern, a shrewd negotiator, to say precisely where the Government stands on the current negotiations.
But while some Northern militants may be worried about Mr Ahern's negotiating style, there is a growing sense of unease in the Republic about the way in which nationalism is represented, politically and in the media.
We appear to be taking part in a series of fictions, including the fiction that Sinn Fein speaks, not only for some Northern nationalists but for all of them; indeed, as on the occasion of Gerry Adams's visit to Downing Street for nationalism, North and South.
We have our own, domestic fictions. We like to pretend that people are treated equally when it's plain that they're not. We try to ignore the evidence of McCracken on the Ansbacher accounts and CORI or the Combat Powerty Agency on the poor. We even insist they have nothing to do with each other.
We don't seriously discuss multinationals, in spite of the best efforts of Paul Sweeney of SIPTU and Pat Rabbitte, because of a superstitious fear that if anything is said they'll leave.
A senior politician told me lately that one of the reasons for not taking a stronger line on Ansbacher was that we risked an outflow of capital. But the Ansbacher funds are already outside the country. They're there because the owners don't want to invest here, any more than they intend to pay tax.
Political independence was never going to be enough. We could do with some of the intellectual toughness and healthy scepticism which once informed British radicalism.
Gearoid O Tuathaigh, in a memorable tribute to Jim Kemmy, spoke of the love of learning and the habit of debate among the British working class which grew in public libraries and reading rooms. It's a tradition honoured by Richard Hoggart in The Uses Of Literacy.
There was a vivid reminder of Kemmy's ambition to break down the barriers between politics, culture and everyday life in one of John Quinn's fine programmes on RTE Radio last month.
The subject was St Patrick's, Maynooth, a college now more open than anyone who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s could have imagined. The members of the staff who contributed clearly enjoyed the change.
One lecturer, Anne Ryan, returned time and again to the real business of education: opening doors - and minds - to the wider world and everyday life. Kemmy would have cheered. So should Joe Lee, who proposes media studies for all.