ON THE face of it (and indeed on any other part), the arrangements for the investigation of the beneficiaries of Mr Ben Dunne's largesse appear to be extremely cumbersome and of questionable efficacy.

They have come about - we shall consider later whether the precise form they have taken is inevitable because of the extreme solicitude which Irish law shows for the rights of the individual at the expense of that nebulous, but vital, thing, the community.

In this case, the community interest concerned is the citizenry's confidence in and knowledge of his or her political system. One form which this solicitude takes is the very restrictive libel law which we have adopted.

In regard to the design of the investigation, the legal issues are threefold. The first is whether witnesses should be compellable by subpoena, in other words whether it should be made a criminal offence for a witness to fail to appear, to refuse to answer questions or to decline to disclose documents which have been requested.

The next issue is whether witnesses should be granted absolute privilege against defamation actions and the other less likely legal consequence which may follow from what they say (e.g. breach of employee's confidentiality or offences under the Official Secrets Act).

This second issue, it has always been accepted, should be determined by the resolution of the first issue, since it is obviously unfair to make it a crime for a person to refuse to answer questions and then to expose them to the risk of defamation action if they do so.

The final question like the first stems from Irish law's great fondness for the interest of the individual. It is that everyone whose reputation may be affected by an investigation should be legally represented before the forum doing the investigating, rather than the forum itself being trusted to ask all the pertinent and fair questions.

All this legal representation means considerable expense. The significant point is that it seems to have been assumed (wrongly in my opinion) that these lawyers must be paid for by the State (i.e. the taxpayer), irrespective of whether the outcome, of the investigation is that the person whose conduct is being investigated is guilty.

Here one ought to summarise the procedure which the Government has laid down for the investigation of the names on the Price Waterhouse list.

In the first place, the list was sent to a retired Circuit Court judge, Judge Gerard Buchanan, whose in brief it was to select from it - to quote the published terms - "details of payments made to or transactions entered into by elected - representatives, holders of public office and members of the public service". Before this is done, persons in these categories are to be allowed "an opportunity to explain the basis of the payments or transactions".

So, before anyone's identity is disclosed, they are to be afforded the opportunity to make arguments against the case implicitly being, "brought against their good name. Judge Buchanan is then to forward a list of the remaining names to the Dail Committee of Procedure and Privileges. The committee is to constitute a sub committee, sitting in public, which it is said - optimistically - is to investigate the matter.

The basis on which this process is criticised by the Opposition parties is that the committee is lacking in the subpoena power. This means the committee will be denied sight of the Price Waterhouse report, the vital background to its investigation (as well as having no investigative arm).

In addition, the committee will not be able to call reluctant witnesses. It is possible the refusal of a member of the Oireachtas to appear might be a dereliction of duty as a deputy or senator, something for which he could be punished (though not very seriously). However there would be no legal sanction against the failure of outsiders to attend.

One reason why the committee is denied the necessary legislation to give it the power of subpoena is that in such legislation has been stalled in the Oireachtas, in effect since Mr John Bruton - then zealous for Oireachtas reform and holding the short lived position of leader of the Dail in Garret FitzGerald's government of the mid-1980s - initiated the campaign for such legislation.

But the underlying policy question is why this legislation has not been enacted. The answer is that politicians perceive that the public (unfairly in my view, but that is another day's work) would not trust them with such legislation.

Regrettably, an Act passed in the mid 1970s leaves it uncertain whether witnesses appearing before an Oireachtas committee enjoy privilege against defamation actions.

This is another reason why the Dail Committee's investigation is less efficacious than it might otherwise be.

Moreover, vesting an investigation in an Oireachtas committee would not offer a knockdown answer to the question, referred to earlier, of the need for hot and cold running lawyers and the consequential expense. For it has been made clear that where the courts consider, if appropriate, even if the investigation is by way of parliamentary committee, legal representation must be.

It has been suggested, notably by Ms Mary Harney, that a suitable mechanism for the investigation - would be "the company's legislation".

Presumably the reference here is to the Companies Act 1990 Sections 8 and 14, which enables the Minister for Enterprise and Employment to apply to the High Court for the appointment of an inspector to investigate the affairs of a private company, for example Dunnes Stores.

The bull point is that this legislation is aimed at a situation in which the shareholders or directors of a company have been damaged, "for the purpose of determining the true persons who are ... financially interested in the success or failure of the company or able to control the policy of the company".

A WIDE RANGING inquiry which embraces all the points in which it is suspected that there has been illegitimate interference in the public life of the State is needed to deal comprehensively with the present situation. In other words, the focus of the investigation contemplated by the 1990 Act is too narrow to meet the present difficulty. So, salvation does not lie this way.

There seems to be no way to square the circle. The difficulty goes back to the Irish law's fondness for individual rights to the detriment of community interests. Or one can say, in the scope of the present that when the opinion of the public was canvassed on this imbalance of priorities - admittedly n the different context of the recent bail referendum the view, which ad been taken by the judges - was ejected by a majority of more than two to one.