John Ryan was busy with his children when this reporter rang to tell him of Hugh O'Flaherty's pending interview on Today FM. The information left him cold. No interest at all? "Not really," came the weary reply. As the widower of Anne, whose death is at the heart of the Sheedy affair, his response was understandable. There can be no starker reality than his.

Yet he had something in common this week with a few prominent politicians: Charlie McCreevy, the man who orchestrated Hugh O'Flaherty's nomination to the European Investment Bank; and Sean Ardagh, chairman of the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Rights, who may yet be inviting Mr O'Flaherty in for a chat. They weren't paying much attention to the radio either.

"Ministers for Finance have very little time for listening to the radio," we were told imperiously. As for Mr Ardagh, he presented himself to Morning Ireland on Thursday, having failed to listen to his own leader's interview (wherein Mr Ahern's rather belated curiosity about "the missing bit" reignited the controversy) or Mr O'Flaherty's.

But if they seriously misjudged the public mood, it was nothing to the remoteness of Mr O'Flaherty. Among the former Supreme Court judge's reasons for not giving an interview to RTE, Liveline (of all things) was singled out as being particularly upsetting.

"1850-715-815 - the lines are open now," quotes Joe Duffy laconically, from his own programme's jingle. "Why does that number upset Hugh O'Flaherty so much?"

So what was Liveline's sin? What distinguished it from other TV/radio programmes? Simple. Liveline is about letting the people speak. "The difference is the punters, the ordinary four-by-twos of all persuasions and none," says Duffy. "Every other programme has its correspondents reporting in from China or Washington or wherever. We have a correspondent in every kitchen, car and lorry in Ireland."

And what the punters had been saying for weeks was that they wanted a straight answer to a simple question: "Why, if the Government was going to impeach Hugh O'Flaherty last year, was it now going to appoint him?"

And they are entitled to an answer, says Duffy. "The finding of the MRBI/Irish Times opinion poll last week - where only 14 per cent actually supported the decision - mirrored almost exactly the ratio of calls we had been getting in the two to three weeks prior to it. We were mirroring the public mood and that's our job. . ."

Was it unfair? "I say it was unwise of Mr O'Flaherty, I say it was an error of judgment, and I say it was unjust of him not to give RTE an interview on that basis."

So if it was the plain people voicing their concerns that so alienated the former judge (as opposed to craven hacks riding the "cavalcade of comment"), what does that say about his stated perception of judges as being "humble servants of the people"? What does it say about his perception of the central issues, as opposed to the furore surrounding them?

In a December interview with this reporter, in a different context, Bride Rosney, the former adviser to President Robinson, redefined modern poverty as being without access.

"Tens of thousands of people don't have access and have no idea how to get any means of access. I actually believe it can change the income you get if you have access" she said.

The import is central. Access is the point which ordinary people zoomed in on without guidance from anyone. Who could be more aware of the significance of access than those who don't have it?

It's about access, stupid, as Bill Clinton might have said.

What happens to ordinary people once they join the ranks of the powerful? Mr O'Flaherty was once a humble print journalist himself (although he denied interviews to the press as well as RTE this week). He and his wife number the Taoiseach's partner and a senior Kerry football player among their friends. Is it simply the case that ordinary, decent people, once placed on pedestals, sometimes forget "the reality of life for the little people," as one woman put it?

Can they become so detached that they really cannot understand why life-changing judicial actions taken after a chance meeting in a leafy neighbourhood might outrage the many who lack the "right" postcode or the facility to identify a Supreme Court judge in his civvies?

It's about access.

Yet Mr O'Flaherty - for whom the law is "the highest of all professions" - seems incapable of understanding what a central concern this must be to ordinary people. Everyone is out of step except him: the media are "pretty one-sided", "Everything has been hyped in a particular way", "There are ways of looking at the polls."

Ergo, on Mr O'Flaherty's planet, public disquiet cannot be real; the polls can mean anything; and Judge Hamilton's judgment that Mr O'Flaherty had "damaged the administration of justice" was "a finding too far".

Combine that blinkered view with what many already perceive to be the closeted, arcane, self-regulatory culture of the bewigged and begowned Law Library. Stir in the naked arrogance and contempt evinced by certain politicians in recent weeks, both in the manner by which Cabinet approval was obtained and in the reaction to public unrest. Add the mounting public cynicism bred by tribunal revelations, with the consequent tendency to seek links and conspiracies at every turn.

The resulting cocktail is bound to set off something a great deal more destructive than a few tetchy journalists. For the common people, the threatened impeachment that was magicked into a lucrative appointment may prove to be the stroke too far.

An astute 18-year-old asked her mother this week who - if anyone - would she vote for now. She had just summarised the politicial landscape, and it went like this: the Tanaiste shrugs that we'll have forgotten all about it in four months; the Taoiseach is distancing himself from it; Sean Ardagh regrets the decision but "wholeheartedly" supports it; Liz O'Donnell insists that "it's a Fianna Fail nomination by a Fianna Fail Minister of a Fianna Fail person"; Charlie McCreevy manages the mighty feat of stunning the Dail into silence, such is his contempt for the questions of the punters' elected representatives.

And these are our senior politicians.

The mother looked like a rabbit blinded by headlights.

The week may also prove to be a watershed for lawyers, hitherto unaccustomed to being challenged by ordinary punters and who tend to relish a certain mystique surrounding their work. "The review date of a sentence is the real sentence", said Mr O'Flaherty. "Nobody had intended that he [Philip Sheedy] should serve four years."

Not many people know that.

But if a former Supreme Court judge describes as a "mystery" the deliberate decision by Sheedy's lawyers not to seek a review date, imagine what a puzzler it presents to Liveline listeners.

So was it a mistake? Did lawyers' heads roll? Could such a thing happen to any of us? And if it did, would we be left to rot if we didn't happen to have friends who happened to go walking in leafy streets where they might happen upon an obliging Supreme Court judge?

And if the situation were reversed, what would John Ryan's chances be of encountering such a deus ex machina while trudging through Tallaght, say, never mind having the luck to chance upon such an unprecedentedly scrupulous, follow-up service?

Yes, it's about access.

The week may also have served notice on the public relations industry apropos its handling of an increasingly cynical and media-savvy public. Mr O'Flaherty's odd decision not to offer himself to a live press conference, for RTE's 6.01 News, say, backfired spectacularly.

By confining his live TV audience to the much smaller audience share of TV3, he ensured that for many punters their first flavour of his interview was through the newspaper commentators on Thursday morning, a decision he must surely be regretting.

The practice of wheeling the beleaguered central figure or a family member into the light to soften the public mood may also be undergoing review after Kay O'Flaherty's plaintive but unilluminating radio interview with Marian Finucane.

"Arrogant" was the word most common to the overwhelmingly negative response. According to the producer, the calls went 10 to one against. A spin put on her performance by a "close friend" quoted in Thursday's Irish Independent, that she "thought she was just speaking to Marian and then realised she was on the air", doesn't wash.

"Far from it," said the producer. In any event, Kay O'Flaherty's first, clearly thought-out sentence was to extend her sympathies to the Ryan family, an unlikely thing to do with just herself and Marian on the line.

The fact that her interview was on RTE only added to the week's GUBU atmosphere. Within hours, Mrs O'Flaherty would be standing confidently on her own doorstep with her husband, complaining about his bad treatment by the same station.

Minutes later, as the couple were moving to go back inside, someone asked Mr O'Flaherty if he would still take the EIB job. It was she, not he, who chose to answer: a loud, emphatic "Yes."

To anyone watching for signs that the couple had gained an inkling of insight into the punters' view, it was not a cheering moment. Later, a well-disposed south Dublin man reiterated that they were indeed a fine, decent couple, but how, he wondered, could anyone remain so cocooned.

He then quoted a few lines from Robbie Burns, which neatly sum up the week's performances and dramatis personae:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us.