A YOUNG man suggested to the panel on Questions and Answers on Monday that if the Buchanan report came up with only one name it could be considered a damp squib.
The chairman, John Bowman, seemed to agree. At least he expected the Minister on the panel, Alan Dukes, to throw in a name or two that would make the programme worth watching.
Mr Dukes wasn't biting. Neither, as it turned out, was Judge Buchanan who stuck boringly to the facts as elicited from a careful reading of the Price Waterhouse report.
If he'd taken the alternative (media) route and come up with a list of names the length of the latest batch of tax defaulters, he could have filled the London Palladium and won rave reviews.
As it was, he made no reference to some of those who'd already admitted to, having enjoyed Bed Dunne's largesse, and the only new names added to the list were members of Charles Haughey's family.
Michael Lowry, of course, was still the most prominent beneficiary. But by now his case is old hat, though he's certain to remain in the limelight and under scrutiny for the rest of the year.
The Opposition's attempt to have Mr Justice McCracken's inquiry named after the former minister, by including his affairs in the terms of reference, fell flat.
Bertie Ahern, who'd approached the issue of business and politics with refreshing openness from the start, fell prey to exaggeration and spoke unwisely of the biggest financial scandal in the history of the State.
Whether he'd forgotten, or simply discounted, the beef tribunal, Greencore and other affairs of the late 1980s and early 1990s it is difficult to say; but strange things happen to politicians before an election.
In this instance, John Bruton retaliated by challenging him to set up an inquiry of his own to discover where Mr Dunne's contributions to Fianna Fail (if any) had gone. He, also proposed terms of reference for Mr Justice McCracken which are wide enough to worry the Opposition.
BUT some commentators delved into the Dunnes/Lowry affair with evident glee when it first came to light are beginning to lose their investigative zeal and seem resigned to inconclusive results.
They merely noted the payments described by Mr Justice Buchanan as untraceable, though they amounted to £3.5 million or almost two-thirds of the total authorised by Mr Dunne.
While the untraced payments may well have included, in one guise or another, the £1.1 million supposed to have been given to a senior figure in Fianna Fail, it's by no means certain that all other politicians - and parties - are in the clear.
Members of the Government say that those who've been given money should approach the judge before he feels obliged to approach them. It would at least save time.
To Fianna Fail, this sounds like a challenge, bordering on insult. It dismisses the £1.1 million donation as a rumour spread by Mr Lowry and his friends in the days before he resigned.
And, as Mr Ahern repeated whenever the occasion arose, FF refuses to dignify rumours from that quarter with a serious response.
(Neither Government nor Opposition made much of the gift of £20,000 given by Mr Dunne to Mrs Maureen Haughey while her husband was Taoiseach. It was explained as a contribution to election expenses. If so, it was as much as many candidates can afford to spend on their whole campaigns.)
But, whether politicians on either side care to admit it or not, how their parties and their campaigns are funded appears to be a subject of deep interest - and deeper suspicion - to the electorate.
Much of the suspicion is drummed up by commentators who seem intent on dragging politicians down to their own level.
I have in mind here the fellow who tells his audience that the next election will be fought between the politicians and the media - and hopes that this gives him a free hand when he attacks all and sundry under the heading of fair comment.
But much suspicion and resentment is also stoked up by politicians who refuse to acknowledge openly their indebtedness to supporters and strategic, allies in business and the need to regulate the relationships between them.
THE history of these relationships is as long as it is, on occasion, dishonour able. The land rezoning and development scandals of the 1960s were also investigated by a distinguished member of the judiciary, Mr Justice Kenny.
He wrote a report that surprised even those who had been droning on for years about rezoning and development. The value of one parcel of land, I seem to remember, had increased by 900 per cent overnight on the strength of one local government
Another related to a few vastly profitable acres in a place that seemed to stand for all such sites. It was called Fortunestown.
The Kenny report created a rare sense of excitement, promising - as we thought a brighter and more honest future. No doubt, some features of local government and land development were changed as a result. Not at once but slowly, over the years.
Mr Justice McCracken presides in a more complicated, cynical and demanding world. His investigation covers territory that was partly covered by Kenny and partly, though with more controversial results, by Mr Justice, now Chief Justice, Hamilton's beef tribunal. If, in the 1960s, there were rumours of brown paper bags crammed with used notes at one end of the scale, £100-a-plate fund-raisers at the other, by the late 1980s the price of political influence had multiplied again and again.
Mr Justice Hamilton was told of contributions to parties estimated by those who attended the tribunal, not in hundreds or thousands but in hundreds of thousands of pounds.
In his report, Mr Justice Hamilton made no reference to the amounts but said these were "normal contributions made to political parties". They did not affect the issues which he had under review.
The series of decisions leading to the introduction of legislation governing political contributions, the funding of parties and spending on elections, may be said to have begun directly or indirectly with the beef tribunal.
The pressure to complete the task certainly came from the events being investigated by Mr Justice McCracken. It may be helpful to him if he had the information that was available to Mr Justice Hamilton about the role of corporate contributions in the political life of this State.