John Bruton said on Sunday that political corruption now amounted to a crisis for the State. And the rest of the week's events have proved him right. It was a week of frustration, anger and astonishment.
What frustrated Mr Justice Flood was George Redmond's refusal to say why Joe Brennan should have paid him £250,000 over 20 years while he held key positions in Dublin's local authorities and Brennan was the city's biggest builder.
What angered Joan Burton of Labour and the Independent senator Joe O'Toole was the 14-day suspension that an all-party committee proposed for Denis Foley, the TD who took part in the DIRT inquiry and forgot he was himself an Ansbacher account holder. And who, in the wider world, was not astonished by the political system's feeble response to the crisis within?
Labour saw party funding as a major source of the deepening difficulties and sought to ban corporate funding. Fine Gael supported the principle - given Bruton's analysis it could hardly do otherwise - but had reservations about the practice.
Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats huddled close for comfort and hoped the fuss might have died down by Christmas. Sinn Fein spied a threat to its American funding and joined them.
As Joe O'Toole told Emily O'Reilly on Tonight With Emily O'Reilly the notion that Foley's suspension was adequate was nonsensical - in fact "a little bit mad". Joan Burton, who has been fighting the demons of poor planning and poorer housing for years, is convinced that, instead of putting their own house in order, Fianna Fail and the PDs are hell bent on bringing it down about their ears.
The final test may with their handling of the case of Burton's old enemy in west Dublin and one of the Dail's wiliest operators, Liam Lawlor. His defence of his role in Dublin County Council, as published, was as full of documented detail and injured pride as Ray Burke's famous line-in-the-sand speech to the Dail.
He claimed to be a consultant, but in what? And, unlike councillors who maintain they'd been given political donations, he argues that much of the money he received from Frank Dunlop was in payment for consultancy services.
There are procedural similarities between the cases of Lawlor and Foley which illustrate how complex and close-knit political life can be. Lawlor had been a member of the Dail Committee on Members' Interests - the group which examined Foley's failure to own up to possession of an Ansbacher account. That was until Lawlor himself admitted to being one of those to whom Frank Dunlop had made donations and he had to step aside.
Foley, too, had been a member of a Dail committee - the Public Accounts Committee - until his own account was discovered and eventually admitted (several weeks after he'd told Bertie Ahern about it). He had already voted in divisions affecting the Moriarty tribunal which is examining the holders of Ansbacher accounts, including Haughey.
The PAC hearings, broadcast on TG4, were credited with raising public awareness of widespread tax evasion. (Foley himself has now settled his own account with the Revenue Commissioners.) And if, in these or other cases, Fianna Fail is forced to decide whether its members should go or stay, the decision will rest with the national executive over which Ahern - the treetop man of north Dublin fame - presides.
Frank Dunlop's evidence to the Flood tribunal - that councillors were paid to support the projects of certain developers - was bound to provoke turbulence. The question now being asked is: Where will it end?
We've already had sharp disagreements in Fine Gael, deepening suspicion in Fianna Fail and the certainty all round that, bad as it's been, we haven't heard the worst of it. The idea at the root of the trouble is that influence, favours and services can be bought. It's an anti-democratic idea, and in a society where it takes money to fight elections and run parties that makes funding a crucial issue.
Politicians and commentators agree about the danger that exists where the interests of business and politics intersect; funding is an issue which stands at this crossroads. No one should be in any doubt about the risks, immediate or potential, attached to the millions paid to Haughey, the tens of thousands to Burke or (allegedly) to Flynn, the thousands to county councillors.
But postponing decisive action is a habit politicians are slow to lose. They may have to face the electorate before it's resolved. Indeed, the only doubt seems to be about the timing of a general election. Will it be before or after the Dail's summer recess? It's bound to be before the end of the year.
What about the tribunals? An election would not mean the end of the tribunals which have done the State some honest service; they've proved themselves to be effective. Their public sessions would have to be suspended for the duration of the campaign but, whatever the outcome of the election, they could resume when it was over.
And does the electorate want an election? Does the country need one? Well, the electorate seldom, if ever, says it wants an election - even when it then goes on to replace the Taoiseach who calls it.
I can recall only one bout of public clamour for an election - when Charles Haughey's GUBU government staggered from the grotesque to the unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented in 1982.
As to whether an election is needed, there is certainly no shortage of outstanding issues - housing, inflation, immigration, health, infrastructure, privatisation, the environment and standards in public life.
Bruton is one of those leaders who often sound as if they haven't been listening to what's going on. But at moments of desperation they get to the heart of the matter. "We've had crises before in our democracy," he said on RTE Radio's This Week. "[They were] external crises caused by war, caused by the activities of paramilitary organisations and the like. This is actually a crisis within the State itself."
dwalsh@irish-times.ie