Analysis: Mr Liam Lawlor made some good points in the Dáil yesterday, but was he crying over spilt milk, asks Paul Cullen.
They say the devil is in the detail but no-one in Dáil Éireann was paying much attention to the finer points yesterday as they called, without a vote, for Mr Liam Lawlor's resignation.
But is there any truth to Mr Lawlor's protestations of innocence or, more accurately, his claim to have co-operated with the Flood tribunal? Is there any justification for the assertion that he is "slightly more than half right" and that, therefore, the rest of us are slightly more than half wrong?
The Dublin West TD did raise a number of specific points that seem persuasive. He asserts, for example, that he had just one bank account in Liechtenstein, when the tribunal says he has eight.
But a letter from the Liechtensteinische Landesbank appears to show that he had one "core account" with about £700,000 held in five different currencies and three different types of account. This arrangement, it seems, was designed to take advantage of currency fluctuations in the Czech Republic, where he had business interests in the 1990s. The bank also appears to back up his claim to have provided all the documentation available in relation to these accounts.
Mr Lawlor is largely correct in saying that he is not responsible for the delay of the tribunal in making its interim report on the Ray Burke modules. He has contributed to general delays, along with many others, but the tribunal has had up to 18 months to digest the evidence of James Gogarty and others. As for the TD's claim that, of the 50 names of donors he had supplied, the tribunal was previously aware of only three, that seems hard to believe. However, we won't know the true situation until tribunal lawyers enlighten us sometime in the future.
The main flaw in Mr Lawlor's arguments is that they do not take account of context. By last week, when Mr Justice Smyth once again ruled on his fate, he was in seriously bad grace. Four times, he has sinned, once at the tribunal, and three times in the High Court.
He acknowledged yesterday that his relations with the tribunal resemble "a heavyweight contest". And have done so, for some time. After all, he was the only politician out of 100 who refused to return the tribunal's questionnaire four years ago. He was the only figure to challenge the tribunal successfully in the courts, and then crowed about his victory afterwards.
Then he refused to turn up to give evidence. When he finally did, he was insolent and ill-prepared. The same arrogance ran through much of the correspondence read out in the High Court cases that followed.
By last week, he could not afford to put a foot wrong. Mr Justice Smyth, in his ruling, said he was considering "the totality of all that has been done or not been done".
By that score, Mr Lawlor didn't stand a chance. An apology, or a promise to co-operate this time, rings hollow when delivered on the fourth occasion.
Also, in such an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust, the tribunal is ill-disposed to accept Mr Lawlor's explanations about the source of money in his account. It may well be that very little of the money in, say, Niall Lawlor's account has anything to do with his father's business dealings. However, the tribunal is understandably anxious to establish this for itself, rather than rely on the assurances of someone who misled them in the past.
Mr Lawlor wins some credit for a relatively restrained performance on this occasion, even if he did refer to tribunal lawyers as "sleeveens" and threaten to sue various newspapers. On previous occasions when he was under pressure, he lashed out wildly against his colleagues in the House. The best thing he could do now is to serve his sentence with dignity, and use the time to settle finally with the tribunal.