A cynic observing the trend of media commentary might predict that one or other of the tribunals will shortly deliver some unanticipated sensation, writes John Waters.
I say this not from inside knowledge of these mysterious bodies but from observing what happens when criticism of tribunal culture reaches a certain level. At such moments, we can expect a new star to parade before cameras on the way to sing like Gigli.
Since the start of the year, the muttering about the cost, wisdom, usefulness and dangers of tribunals has again been rising towards crescendo levels. Some commentators - not all seasoned tribunal sceptics - have been advancing cogent arguments as to why it may be time for a rethink. If I had a vested interest in the longevity of the tribunal instrument, and an inside track on the timing of strategic revelation (if such a cynical concept might be imagined to exist), I'd be thinking it was time to play an ace or two.
The tribunal is indeed one of the most mysterious elements to emerge in recent Irish public life. An outsider cursorily observing the daily tribunal fest might understandably conclude that Ireland had recently undergone some kind of cultural revolution, that a new broom has set about cleaning up the moral life of the nation, that this society is hell-bent on getting to the truth. However, not only is the moral life of the nation no better, but the evolution of tribunal culture had little to do with morality in the first place.
The tribunal is the illegitimate offspring of coalition governments involving Fianna Fáil. Because of the chronic instability of these arrangements, a necessity arose for a device to deal with problematic issues which might, if left to unravel in an uncontrolled fashion, threaten relations between the partners. The tribunal enabled such issues to be rendered unthreatening.
Arguably, though, the greatest benefits of tribunals have accrued to the media, for whom tribunal revelations have been a cheap, ready-made product. And it is not a coincidence that the most fervent champions of tribunalism have been journalists with a broadly left-wing perspective, for whom the tribunals have provided both a means of flailing their ideological enemies - while they themselves earn reputations as the guardians of public probity - and a way of deflecting scrutiny from flaws in their own ideological prescriptions.
It should be obvious why such individuals would depict Irish society as corrupt in certain respects, while ignoring less convenient forms of dishonesty. For example, it is arguable that the welfare state cultivates a far more widespread and damaging dishonesty than anything involving brown envelopes, but this cannot be confronted while Flood and Moriarty continue to sit. In this respect, the tribunals have actively suppressed a rounded debate about corruption.
A society intent upon finding the truth would not be easy with this, any more than it would tolerate lawyers becoming fabulously wealthy from investigating minor backhanders several decades in the past. A healthy society might ask why its police force is considered unfit to investigate such matters, or why, in the event that a previously undreamt-of wrongdoing has come to light of recent times, some new kind of policing could not be developed to meet this need.
The inherent inconsistency of tribunal culture, too, has damaged the public perception of the legal system. There is an incoherence in the way, for example, one tribunal will rigorously target an individual, whereas another will confine itself to generalities, refusing to point fingers. More disturbing is that rigour appears to exist in inverse proportion to the gravity of the issue.
There is also the matter of the disjunction between the moralistic language providing the background radiation to the tribunal-fest and the consequences which arise - or do not arise - as a result of tribunal proceedings. Some citizens have been disgruntled by the failure of particular tribunals to deliver them justice, while others are named and shamed in a manner devoid of the normal judicial sanction.
Very often it seems the tribunals operate as an arm of the media, providing a quasi-legal procedure on which journalists deliver the ultimate verdict and dole out punishment in the form of public excoriation of institutions or individuals. This results in, yes, a corruption of the public perception of what jurisprudence is about and what wrongdoing signifies.
I met recently an individual who, having regaled me with the tricks he had employed to outfox the taxman, asked me if I was following the tribunals. I muttered about not being a great fan and he immediately upbraided me for my lack of public spiritedness. "We'd never have known about all this corruption if it hadn't been for tribunals!" he declared.
For some citizens, then, the tribunal represents less a way of purging dishonesty from Irish life, as of providing a fund of justification for the moral economies of the smaller operator. So long as Flood and Moriarty are doing their stuff for the nine o'clock news, the common or garden tax-dodger or social welfare fraudster can feel secure in the knowledge that he is only trotting after the big fry. Morals are a different country.