It was probably the most prophetic sentence of the thousands uttered at the beef tribunal. The tribunal had been running seven months when the chairman, Mr Justice Liam Hamilton, said: "I think that if the questions that were asked in the Dail were answered in the way they are answered here, there would be no necessity for this inquiry and a lot of money and time would have been saved."

That was in January 1992. The tribunal continued hearing evidence until June 1993 and reported in August 1994. The £35 million Tribunal of Inquiry into the Beef Industry was the longest, most expensive and controversial in the history of the State. It caused a general election; gave rise to three Supreme Court cases; led to an investigation by a parliamentary committee and a disciplinary hearing of the Bar Council; led to the Freedom of Information Act; and it changed Irish politics for ever.

Events at the tribunal led to the general election and the subsequent Fianna Fail/ Labour coalition, which included a move toward freedom of information in its promised programme for government.

The tribunal had opened the door on the workings of the State just a fraction - but enough to make it difficult to close it fully again.

The next government, the "Rainbow Coalition", was also committed to freedom of information and left the same Labour junior minister, Eithne Fitzgerald, in charge of preparing the legislation in the new government.

The proposed legislation was modelled closely on freedom of information legislation in Australia and New Zealand. Fitzgerald did not have an easy task: as memory of the beef tribunal dimmed, so did the commitment to openness.

The legislation was nearly lost inside the Department of Justice, where the strategy seemed to be to delay as long as possible - so the proposal would fall when the Government fell.

Compromise was forced on Fitzgerald. Originally the legislation was to include the right of a public servant to "blow the whistle" on what he or she believed was a wrong-doing. That was dropped. Another disappointment to many watching the legislation as it journeyed through the system was that the Garda was not been included as a public body under the Act. It can, however, be added at any time if a government was of a mind to push out the limits of the Act.