The affairs of a small number of politicians in the Republic have convulsed public life for half a decade. Outbursts of outrage and calls for retribution are understandable. They are also warranted if they ensure that wrongdoers are brought to book and the tempted deterred. Yet perspective needs to be regained if faith in a flawed but well-functioning political system is not to be irreversibly eroded.
Despite many years of widely circulated rumours that some people in lofty positions were not playing by the rules, opinion surveys over decades have found the Irish to be among the most satisfied in Europe with how they are governed. It is difficult to see how this could have been, if abuse of power had been as endemic as is now frequently suggested.
Indeed, given the temptations of high office - and when compared to their counterparts in Europe, never mind the rest of the world - Irish politicians have succumbed relatively infrequently.
Start with campaign donations. Though often impossible to distinguish from plain palm-greasing, they are a perennial problem in all democracies. Everywhere even politicians who are not on the make fear being outspent at election time by their rivals. But lest anyone think our lot have a monopoly on the crooked contribution, consider the woes of office-holders, past and present, in Europe's largest countries in recent months.
In the UK, Formula One's Bernie Eccelstone quietly helped the Labour Party with costly campaigning before the 1997 election. Once in power, Tony Blair's government helped to have Formula One exempted from an EU directive banning tobacco advertising which would have left Mr Eccelstone out of pocket.
In Germany, former chancellor Helmut Kohl's retirement is little happier than Charles Haughey's. He did some service to state and continent but along the way he channelled cash to party slush funds. Unlike the grey area inhabited by those appearing before Flood and Moriarty, German politicians are explicitly prohibited from taking such contributions. Worse still, Dr Kohl was not compromised by a greengrocer or builder, but by a shady international arms dealer.
West of the Rhine, President Jacques Chirac's past regularly returns to haunt him. The latest ghost is a deceased political fixer who appears in a video alleging he witnessed the President pocketing brown envelopes. But Mr Chirac, by virtue of his office, has to do nothing so undignified as to account for himself before an upstart judge.
When straightforward bribery is considered, the Republic looks better yet. The State in most regions is by far the biggest single employer, provider of housing and buyer of goods and services. Such economic power will inevitably attract the unscrupulous.
Despite this, it is unheard of for politicians in the Republic to secure Civil Service jobs or local authority homes in return for backhanders or votes. Not so in other countries. In Portugal pockets are sometimes lined when public services recruit. In Austria the housing queue can be jumped if a vote is promised.
As regards the links between government and business, with the exception of the building and beef industries it is hard to find business people in the Republic who complain that kickbacks and connections are needed to obtain government contracts.
In France, where politicians glide easily between public office and the pinnacles of the state's business interests, entrepreneurs often need deep pockets and influence if they are to be considered when public contracts are tendered.
In Italy, where poor politicians are thin on the ground, most people take it as given that a career in politics is a route to riches. Bettino Craxi, a one-time prime minister, shocked even sleaze-weary Italians. He held court in one of Rome's grandest hotels in the manner of a decadent Renaissance prince - and all on an MP's salary.
In the Republic by contrast, where the lifestyles of TDs are closely observed, there are few fabulously wealthy politicians. Those who are can account for their wealth. Mr Charles Haughey, whose high living raised eyebrows precisely because it was so unusual, is the exception to that.
But corruption is about far more than elected representatives dishonestly feathering their nests. In Belgium the leader of the Francophone Socialists was assassinated. Alain van der Beist, one of his ministers, is to be tried for the murder.
In Spain Jose Barrionuevo, a former interior minister, was jailed for kidnapping committed while in office. In Scotland one out-of-control local council has been rapped for sectarianism, physical intimidation and nepotism.
Little wonder, then, that in many places around the world, and sometimes in Europe, too, the man in the street hopes that unprincipled politicians will keep their snouts in the trough: compared to graft, there are much worse abuses of power. And in this respect the excesses of Irish politicians pale in comparison with some of their counterparts abroad.
Without playing down the unacceptable behaviour of some, our politicians suddenly do not look so bad in this context. With the mechanisms to catch the miscreants among them working well, they look better still. So why such disenchantment?
Transparency International, a corruption-monitoring organisation, has an explanation. It says that when erring politicians get their comeuppance, and wrongdoing aired in all its tawdry detail, bar-room whispers become newspaper headlines. Such prominent reminders reinforce the feeling that politics is rotten.
Although the instinctive reaction may be to reach for one brush to tar all elected representatives, this would be wrong on two counts. First, it is unfair. Take the ongoing economic miracle. Though politicians would like to take more credit than is their due, tough political choices and good policies played no small part.
But even if one's heart does not bleed for put-upon politicians with thin skin, there is a second, and far more serious effect of dismissing them all as self-servers. If opinion polls are anything to go by, voters will desert political parties in droves at the next election, and the largest collection of independents ever will descend on the Dail.
The complexity of forming coalitions and, more important, keeping them together increases exponentially the greater the number of parties and independents involved. And as independents look on politics primarily as squeezing what they can out of government for their constituents, their concern for any wider national interest is often limited.
If their role is magnified, the short-termism of government survival will predominate. Politicking will take precedence over policy and, ironically, patronage will probably increase. It is no coincidence that Italy, the country in Europe in which this sort of fragmentation is most evident, is also the most poorly governed.
A country can get away with weak and unstable government in times of plenty when hard choices are few. But think back to the dark days of the 1980s. Successive governments were hobbled by their reliance on independents. This was a significant factor in the delayed restoration of economic stability, the price of which was paid in joblessness and emigration.
With public and press ever less tolerant of transgression, and rightly demanding better conduct from politicians, and the tribunals rooting out wrongdoing, standards in public life are rising, not falling. Without a recognition of this, the baby may go the way of the bath water to the detriment of all.
Dan O'Brien is Europe editor of the Economist Intelligence Unit in London