Those of us who pursued Charles Haughey over several years about the sources of his wealth missed the point. It was not that he did not have questions to answer about the obvious disparity between the known sources of his income and the cost of his lifestyle. Nor that such questions did not raise further questions about the even-handedness of his administration of the public interest while he held public office.
Rather it was that by focusing on questions about his apparent wealth, we missed a more obvious issue and a far more important one. Furthermore, our fascination with the revelations of the present tribunals may also cause us to ignore that larger and more important issue.
The point is not that a few politicians may have been corrupt; rather it is that the political system as a whole is corrupt.
We wondered through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s about the sources of Mr Haughey's wealth, but we missed out wondering about the sources of the wealth of a significant minority of Irish society and, more obviously, the lack of wealth of an even more significant minority. We may have wondered about the power Mr Haughey commanded, but we did not wonder about the powerlessness of a majority.
How is it that so many Irish people live in relative deprivation while there is evidence of such abundance elsewhere? What is there about our political system that not alone permits this, but ordains it? People are poor primarily because their parents were poor. Of course some poor people end up rich but very few rich people end up poor. Almost all the poor are from poor homes. Poor homes engender inequality: inequality of educational opportunity, inequality of occupational opportunity, inequality of access to the arts, inequality of power and of influence. And the political system copper-fastens this by representing the interests of the rich at the expense of the poor.
For example, every Budget of the last 20 years has favoured the rich - the last Budget was somewhat more egalitarian than previous ones in that tax reductions were skewed in favour of the lower-paid, but even then the gains of the wealthy were hefty and the poorest of the poor - those not even on low pay - were ignored again.
It is regarded as a source of pride for finance ministers to ensure social welfare benefits keep abreast of inflation. But how is it that our political culture should not require finance ministers to peg social welfare increases to inflation plus the expected economic growth rate, thereby ensuring that at least the poor do not fall further behind?
By far the most flagrant political scandal of our times is not that a few politicians creamed off a few hundred thousand or million. It is that the political system has creamed off thousands of millions for the wealthy and powerful over the years. The consequence of this corruption can best be seen in places such as Darndale, Neilstown and similar estates throughout the country.
It can also be measured in prevailing attitudes and responses to crime. The crimes of the poor are pursued to interrogation, conviction and imprisonment; the crimes of the rich are simply ignored.
The explanation for the corruption of our political system lies in part - and there are other factors - in the manner in which the system is financed. By permitting the private funding of the political system, the system is necessarily corrupted. Corrupted in the sense of necessarily reflecting the interests of its financiers against those of the majority and, particularly, of the poor.
So if it was wrong for Charles Haughey to be financed by the wealthy over the years, how much more wrong is it that the entire political system was financed by the wealthy all those years and continues to be so financed?
If it was wrong for Charles Haughey to get loads of cash from Ben Dunne, then how was it not wrong for Fine Gael to get loads of cash from Ben Dunne? How could it be worse for a wealthy businessman to buy a politician than to buy a political party? He did not buy Fine Gael, we will be told, but he made a fair stab at it, aided and abetted by his acolyte Michael Lowry.
Indeed even before Michael Lowry came on the Fine Gael financial scene, Ben Dunne was already buying influence with the party and he was at it during the year that may well be remembered as "The Year of the Bagman" - 1989.
On October 30th, 1989 Ben Dunne and his wife were taken to dinner in Barberstown Castle by Alan Dukes and his wife. Alan Dukes was then leader of Fine Gael. According to Mr Dukes they had a wide-ranging discussion on policy issues. Mr Dukes said: "There were a substantial number of issues on policy matters and in particular economic matters in which he and I seemed to have a reasonable convergence of views."
Mr Dunne handed over £30,000 to Mr Dukes that night for Fine Gael with the promise of a further £60,000 fairly soon. If there had not been a "reasonable convergence of views" is it likely Mr Dunne would have parted with £30,000? If, for instance, Mr Dukes said he found the idea of inherited wealth unacceptable and that without a major intervention by the State on such wealth it would be impossible to create a fair society, how would Mr Dunne have reacted?
Certainly if he had been listening and understood what Mr Dukes was on about, he probably would have gone off home or to Myo's pub in Castleknock, where he might have found company more congenial to him, and there would have been no £30,000 and no promise of more.
A year or two later, John Bruton was at the feet of Ben Dunne again asking for money for Fine Gael and even more spectacular sums were forthcoming. I am not suggesting that of the political parties here that Fine Gael is especially corrupt - still less that either Alan Dukes or John Bruton is or was at all corrupt. But I am suggesting that amid the moralistic bayings we are likely to be subjected to by Fine Gael in the coming months, we might recall that this party too is corrupt in the sense of being bought.
Fine Gael, along with Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats - Labour is a different case but hardly much less compromised - are bought by big business and big businessmen (very few women in this league, which says something in itself). They are no different from Charles Haughey.