`Not one person in the country" had been affected by the O'Flaherty appointment, said Minister Jim McDaid, this week. He should try that line on a few thinking Fianna Fail activists (and there are some) outside Leinster House.

Though struggling with powerful, competing forces, they are peeking - if not actively looking, just yet - into their hearts. But the process will be a lengthy one and there is a ritual to be observed. First, hang tough and blame the media. "You lot really are terrible", said a middle-class activist with an uneasy laugh, "and all you've done is ensure no judge will ever perform a humanitarian act again".

Second, point out that the country never had it so good. Third, concede with some hand-wringing that what Mr O'Flaherty did was probably wrong and that ordinary people are indeed building up a righteous head of steam against the Government. Fourth, shrug helplessly when news emerges of a "second list" - or "extract" or "secondary documentation", or whatever you're having yourself - being withheld from the Moriarty tribunal by the party. The fact is no-one has not been affected by the Hugh O'Flaherty debacle, not even Fianna Failers. They are not unaware of the real import of the issues. Yet, they seem to dwell in some parallel universe, which touches this one seldom and fleetingly.

As the rest of the citizenry threw their hands in the air this week, raging against the accelerating flow of sleaze, at the spectacle of the Taoiseach taking the stand to join the long list of "can't remembers", and the sheer frustration of being unable to deliver a hard smack to a Government side-stepping into a three-month recess like a recidivist mugger through Mountjoy's revolving doors, a participant's verdict to this writer on Wednesday's parliamentary party meeting summed up the party's focus: "I found it very heartening. As far as we're concerned the whole thing is dead and buried now."

Only a few hours before on RTE's lunchtime news, it seemed as though a couple of independents might become a target for a seething public. Jackie Healy-Rae's contemptuous dismissal of public unrest as "absolutely ridiculous", while blithely declaring that "people in my constituency don't want a general election", was guaranteed to turn up the temperature. Anyone hoping for enlightenment from Harry Blayney was not encouraged by his opening reference to "so-called scandals and sleaze".

But a quick trawl through middle Ireland suggests a couple of independent politicians clinging to power is the least of it. "Ordinary people are throwing their hat at the whole system," says a hard-nosed, Dublin businessman. "There is a huge sense of resentment building up. Apart from the unbelievable arrogance surrounding Government behaviour in recent weeks, what galls me is their continuing references to the booming economy. Anyone can see that the gulf between the "haves" and "have-nots" is widening.

"A lot of us are only reading about the Celtic Tiger. But who is it for? My son, who is on what's thought to be a reasonable salary - £25,000 a year - can't buy a house. People are borrowed to the limit to fuel these champagne lifestyles we're all supposed to be having," he says. "That's why people don't ask the price of anything anymore. Those borrowings are being used to camouflage the underlying problems. That's all that's keeping them out of sight for now - huge borrowings and an act of faith."

In short, this man - and many others - suspect a stroke of more personal import is being pulled on the public and that this is the context for much of the boiling anger. To salt the wound, we are confronted by the cream of Ireland's business and political communities swaggering towards one tribunal or another, stepping from cars that cost as much as the average house, bodyguards scanning an empty Dublin Castle courtyard, while rumours swirl about who is linked to whom by which affair, and whose distressed spouse has had to be whisked from the country by chartered jet for some urgent R&R before the next tribunal appearance. In the meantime, the Government toughs it out, obviously content to believe that in a few months time, fickle little public minds will have moved on to something newer and shinier.

Fianna Failers inside and outside the House clearly took on board the leader's admonition this week to accentuate the positive (the peace process, the economy et cetera) and eliminate the negative (basically, the media).

The woman activist shrugs helplessly: "What's happened to Fianna Fail is no different to what's happening to the rest of the country. A lot of little people have got a little money and a little power. Just watch what a bit of power does to someone who becomes the captain of a golf club.

"Look at Hugh O'Flaherty, with his beautiful house and excellent pension and you have to wonder why he wants that boring job in the European Investment Bank so badly. It's not the money, so it has to be the power. And once that takes over, they lose sight of everything else. People like that just don't understand people like us."

As she talks it becomes evident that neither she nor her friends are ready by any means to jump ship; but there are doubts. They might not want to jump ship, but how do they explain - even to themselves - their willingness to stay on board?

And who is to guide them in this weighty endeavour? Their elected representatives? Hardly. As errant TDs and senators were subjected to gagging orders this week, then FF Justice Committee members were instructed on how to vote and the mavericks (demanding a part in the decision-making process) got their "dressing-down" from senior members at the parliamentary party meeting, it was clear these so-called public representatives had their own difficulties. They too had been festering in a kind of party-imposed isolation.

Compounding that isolation, is the extraordinary cocooning effect of Leinster House itself, as described to this writer by another FF Oireachtas member on Wednesday: "It's unbelievable how isolated we are from all the hype. We're totally oblivious in here . . . learning what we know from TV. When I go home, I find my wife is inhabiting a totally different world."

But this is no bad thing he reckons, because those TDs who talked to the media merely succumbed to the hype; they were "feathering their own nests and can't resist a microphone stuck in their noses . . . for God's sake, where's the sense of perspective? No-one's saying we haven't dug the potholes for ourselves - and it's safe to say some of them might even be the size of quarries - but look at Monday's other news. The significance of the announcement on decommissioning was second only to the Belfast Agreement. Yet, within 12 hours it was no longer a news item. Does anyone remember there is a party in opposition in Leinster House that hasn't formally decommissioned?"

The sense of injustice is palpable. The previous day's media splash on the notorious "second list" was, said this man, "based on a wrong turn down a cul de sac in Dublin Castle. . . the reporting was based on a totally false premise".

Not so, as it happens, but he genuinely believed it to be so. And if he believed it, having just emerged from a meeting where he was told the party leader had been up all night digesting the Tribunal transcript, what were the grassroots to make of it? In any event, this man argued that the issue was not so much about right or wrong, as about proportion. He is firmly on the side of those who believe the O'Flaherty decision to be wrong.

"If a poll were taken now of the Fianna Fail parliamentary party, I'm sure you'd get a landslide saying the O'Flaherty appointment was wrong . . . no, not just because of public reaction. Even in the immediate aftermath of the nomination, many of us believed the decision was wrong."

So what price our public representatives and their ability to influence the things that matter to us?

And if anyone is wondering why that Wednesday parliamentary party meeting triggered such an outbreak of sweetness and light among the members, it could well be because they emerged feeling safer in their seats. The independents, according to one source, are understood to be safely on-side for at least another 12 months.

And with so much money whooshing through the economy, the trick for the Government now is to stay in power for as long as it takes for the money to make it into people's pockets. That done, it will be up to the common people to decide if money alone is enough . . .