The facts that have been revealed as a result of the work of three tribunals and a number of other investigations, together with associated leaks, have done great damage to the reputation of Irish politics. But this has been necessary damage. It is the price that has to be paid in order to eliminate, once and for all, the abuses that began to creep into Irish politics some 30 years ago. Our State was extraordinarily fortunate in the integrity of its revolutionary politicians, most of whom served as ministers for almost five decades. But from 1957 onwards, new faces began to appear in government, a process that accelerated throughout the 1960s. By 1969 all the first generation were gone from government, although Frank Aiken and Paddy Smith remained in the Dail well into the 1970s. Some of the newcomers in the Fianna Fail governments of that period were people whose integrity matched that of the revolutionary generation - among them people like Jack Lynch, George Colley, Des O'Malley and Paddy Hillery. But there were others who had fewer scruples, in particular about how funds were to be raised for the party.
The jobbery which since the 1930s had become a feature of Irish politics in relation to the small range of posts that remained outside the purview of the Civil Service Commission and the Local Appointments Commission - such as local authority gangers, rate collectors, vocational teachers, government messengers, and, in a genteel way, judges - was extended in the 1960s to the appointment of consultants. And in this area it became linked, as other political appointments were not, to contributions to the Fianna Fail party. In parallel with this development, the 1970s also saw the emergence of growing suspicions about abuses of the planning process, where the scale of the profits to be made from land zoning appeared to pose too much of a temptation to some landowners and developers. Moreover a very small number of Fianna Fail politicians at national level began to draw on themselves suspicions of personal financial misbehaviour, and a "golden circle" of wealthy businessmen became associated with this element of the party. Elements in business and elements in politics thus began to corrupt each other, encouraging a demoralising belief among many other businessmen that in some key areas of economic activity success could be secured only by dirtying one's hands.
People of integrity in Fianna Fail as well as many in other parties found this situation intolerable. Many of us on both sides of the House came to share a conviction amounting to moral certainty that corruption existed on a significant scale. But, in the absence of concrete evidence, there was nothing any of us, either in Fianna Fail or in other parties, could do about it. The majority favouring straight government that certainly existed in the Dail could not be mobilised across party lines, and efforts within Fianna Fail itself to purge it of this element repeatedly failed.
It has to be said that part of the reason for this failure was the existence of a middle group of politicians who, while themselves personally honest, were less than vigilant about the honesty of some of their colleagues. There were too many who preferred not to know - who were prepared to ignore the signs, and to tolerate the low standards in high places against which George Colley had publicly warned. Had these "middle-ground" politicians supported Colley and O'Malley, this evil could have been rooted out far sooner.
It has to be added that the public reaction evoked by attempts even to hint at these concerns was so passive, or even negative, that it became evident that public opinion was unwilling to face this issue - preferring to turn its face away from political malfeasance. Widespread admiration for what was widely seen as political "cuteness" left little room for healthy moral indignation.
It was a thoroughly depressing period. It was not until the early 1990s that there was any sign of a serious challenge to the wall of silence that seemed to surround this miasma. But hopes then raised that a clean-up would take place soon faded. Before I left the Dail in 1992, I had heard that fear of the powerful forces ranged against exposure had frightened off people who, it had briefly seemed, might have given evidence on certain matters to the police.
The fact that, against all the odds, and by sheer chance, exposure has eventually come about is, frankly, a relief.
I know that for the moment many people have difficulty in distinguishing between the small group who have disgraced politics and the vast majority of decent and honest politicians in all parties. But the damage caused to public confidence in the system by this confusion will in the long run be less than that which has up to now been inflicted by the apparent immunity of wrongdoers. For, in time, the persistence of this immunity might have - perhaps even must have - infected our political system much more widely, as has in fact happened in most of the Latin countries of Western Europe.
A further year or more of revelations and exposures may now lie ahead of us - and this may, or may not, have repercussions on the stability of our political system. But, however that may be, when these tribunals and inquiries have finished their work we should once again enjoy a political system in which all the elements will be free from these distortions. Parties will be able to compete again on equal terms, neither drawing nor repelling support because of improper activities on the part of a very small element.
The past practice of financing parties and elections by means of contributions from business, given without expectation of receiving improper favours in return, has now had to be largely abandoned, because in some important instances it clearly was abused, and had thus become generally suspect. I am not sure we have yet gone far enough to replace this by what may now need to be a system of exclusive State financing of political activities. This aspect may need to be looked at again.
For the total elimination of business contributions to parties would not merely exclude the buying of favours for individual businesses or projects. It would also remove the source of what could be a subtle pro-business bias against redistributive policies. And such improper constraints on redistribution will need to be eliminated if we are to succeed in mobilising public and political opinion in favour of using the rapid economic growth of the period immediately ahead to achieve the effective elimination of poverty. A lesson to be learnt from our experience of the last couple of decades is surely that we must become less inhibited about speaking about political issues in moral terms.
For far too long, in politics as in many other matters, being judgmental on matters of right and wrong has been out of fashion - apparently because any form of judgmentalism came to be seen to be - of all things - politically incorrect. That, of course, is a morally atrophying doctrine that we must abandon. For politics is above all public service, and all forms of public service are rightly subject to moral discipline.