Former Taoiseach Dr Garret Fitzgerald has said he felt "a moral certainty" that there was corruption in Irish public life when in government but he had lacked the evidence to act.
On RTE's Questions and Answers last night he defended the work of the tribunals. While their revelations would cause damage to politics in the short term, he said, he felt there would have been much more damage in the longer term if wrongdoing had not been exposed.
Dr Fitzgerald, responding to a question on whether the Fianna Fail TD, Mr Liam Lawlor, should resign, thought there was "a strong case for his resigning" but he did not think he would.
He rejected criticism of the tribunals. He thought they "will succeed before the end of the day in exposing a very large proportion of the things that were happening".
"I must say when I left politics in 1992 I was very depressed about the future of the country. I knew with a moral certainty about much of the things that have come out since - but moral certainty doesn't entitle you, with our libel laws, to allege things. And if you allege things and can't prove them you're the worst in the world, and it looked as if this was going to continue."
If corruption had not been tackled through the tribunals "our political system would have been quite profoundly corrupted. The number of people involved in corruption at national level was very few at this stage but that could have spread - as it has in France, Italy and Spain. I think it's marvellous these things are being dealt with and are going to be exposed".