When the Dail Committee of Public Accounts completed its 26-day inquiry into the Deposit Interest Retention Tax (DIRT) controversy last evening, there was already the sense of a job well done. It may be that the committee has still to deliver its final determination but, by any measure, its forensic examination of all the matters related to the operation of DIRT between 1986 and 1998, has been a success. In the process, it has also boosted the stature of the Dail and forcefully made the case for the Dail committee system - rather than costly public tribunals - to investigate matters of pressing public interest.
The success of the DIRT inquiry is easily explained. For the first time in almost 30 years, a Dail committee had equipped itself with full powers of privilege and compellability to conduct a High Court-style investigation. It had the constitutional and legal powers to direct witnesses from the financial institutions, the Revenue, the Central Bank and the Department of Finance to appear before it.
The Committee had other advantages. The exhaustive report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr John Purcell and his staff, provided the essential groundwork and established a strong prima facie case of mal-administration and wholesale tax evasion.
The Committee members themselves, under the able chairmanship of Mr Jim Mitchell, deserve commendation for the diligent and assiduous way in which they teased out the full facts. Critically, there was never the sense that committee members were pursuing a party line or acting in a partisan way. There was the strong sense that the likes of Mr Pat Rabbitte, Mr Bernard Durkan and Mr Sean Ardagh were protective only of the wider public interest.
Given the importance of the issues under investigation, it was especially welcome that the proceedings of the Committee were broadcast live by TG4, who deserve praise for their editorial initiative. It is to be hoped that television coverage will be readily available for future Dail inquiries or tribunals. The continued exclusion of the television cameras from such as the Flood and Moriarty tribunals - which are not regular High Court sittings but rather investigations of issues of immense public importance - runs counter to the public interest.
The DIRT inquiry marks a significant step forward for the Dail system. The complaint is regularly made that the Dail debates cast more heat than light and that many of the recent tribunals might not have been necessary if the Dail had been more robust and thorough in its examination of the various scandals. The DIRT inquiry has shown that the committee system has the potential to restore public accountability to the place where it rightly belongs - the floor of Dail Eireann.
The Committee, unlike all of its predecessors - including the Dail committee which investigated the fall of the 1994 Reynolds government - will now have the power to make findings and to issue recommendations. These will be awaited with great interest.