So now we know what we always suspected but could never say openly. The "C" word that dared not speak its name.
Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt - not since Maggie Thatcher's "Out, out, out" has a political message been so starkly delivered. The report on Ray Burke amounts to the starkest indictment of "low standards in high places" in Irish life.
Even after the scandals of recent years, this report has the capacity to astonish. Mr Justice Feargus Flood has called a spade a spade. There are no prevarications, no weasel words, no get-out clauses.
All the excuses, alibis, concoctions and false trails that were conjured up at the witness-box in Dublin Castle have been swept aside.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck; if the envelope is stuffed with money and it's going into Mr Burke's pocket, it's a corrupt payment.
"Whatever comes out of the woodwork from now on, a line is in the sand," Mr Burke told the Dáil in 1997 when trying to fend off the allegations that followed him for decades.
Now Mr Justice Flood has drawn his own line in the sand. Mr Burke and his business friends stand on one side of that line, and honest, decent citizens stand on the other.
Mr Burke's entire career in public life stands condemned, from the time he was gifted his house in 1973 to the substantial payments which flowed to him throughout the 1980s.
Two years ago, he sold the house, Briargate, for the sum of almost €4 million.
For years, journalists who tried to write about Burke's business dealings were harassed and threatened, legally and even physically. At the tribunal, lawyers and spin doctors sought to muddy the waters, until the public could no longer distinguish the goodies and the baddies.
Now, Mr Justice Flood has lifted some stones and found corruption under most. Heavens knows what the next phase of the tribunal will decide, but many politicians and developers must have slept uneasily last night.
And what of James Gogarty, the 85-year-old who overcame arthritis, diabetes, deafness, kidney stones, blackouts, a bad heart and widespread disbelief to tell his story in 1998?
Mr Gogarty's enemies tried to stop him telling his story; when he started to give evidence, they blackened his name. Maybe only a man of his age, more interested in making his peace with God than any material concerns, could feel free enough to tell the unvarnished truth.
The other victims of this affair remain nameless. What about the ordinary people who lost out because decisions were being made in the interests of businessmen, rather than in the public interest? What about the hundreds of people who lost their jobs after Mr Burke capped RTÉ's advertising income in order to help Century? Or the innocents snared in the land deals that funded Mr Burke's offshore payments?
Some of us who've been witnesses to the scale of opposition to this tribunal over the past five years sometimes doubted its ability to produce a result. We were wrong; Mr Justice Flood and his legal team have produced a decisive, brave report that should provide the model for future investigations.
Not surprisingly, Mr Burke and his benefactors have gone to ground. They have the resources to fight this verdict and fight it they will.
Prosecutions, if any are brought, will be lengthy and contested affairs. This report is only a staging-post on the way to justice, rather than justice itself.
But for now, as Mr Gogarty might phrase it, "Did we get a report? Did we, what!"