Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity, wrote George Bernard Shaw, but even he would be shocked by the overweening power of lawyers in Irish society today.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Dublin Castle, where the Flood and Moriarty tribunals are now well into their sixth years.
It used to be said that the figure of Justice above the entrance to the castle faced inwards because the British administration had turned its back on the populace outside. Today, one suspects the real reason she keeps her back to the city is to gaze in awe at the earnings of modern-day barristers.
Both tribunals were set up at the height of the boom. We knew the justice they dispensed wouldn't come cheap, but there was plenty of money around at the time. Besides, we were told they would last just a few short months.
Yet the Flood and Moriarty tribunals are still with us and have been joined by a handful more. Moriarty, which seemed on the brink of completing its work two years ago, is contemplating another year or two of investigation.
Meanwhile, Flood has completed just three out of at least 23 modules. At that rate, it will be wrapping up its business in the year 2036 (by which time Mr Justice Flood will have reached the ripe old age of 108!)
Six months after the interim report, none of those named in connection with corrupt payments has been prosecuted. In spite of all the good work of the McCracken and Moriarty tribunals, Charles Haughey has evaded the justice many think he deserves.
This is bad enough, but the real time-bomb ticking at the tribunals is money. The costs run up so far by the tribunals - €25 million for Flood and €12 million for Moriarty - give no indication of the final bill. Every witness appearing at the tribunal, and there have been hundreds, comes with a solicitor or barrister or, nearly always, both. Most teams are headed by a senior counsel, and many have two.
No one knows how much all this will cost. Some will not get their costs, but the majority are likely to be awarded much of what they ask for. The only yardstick here is the €17 million bill submitted by lawyers for the Irish Haemophilia Society at the Lindsay tribunal. That was for a 196-day tribunal that ran over a period of 29 months, about half the length of Flood's investigations into Ray Burke.
Senior counsel at the tribunals charge a minimum of €2,250 a day, whether or not the inquiry is sitting. That's what the average industrial worker earns in a month. Yet these rates are not enough for the IHS team, who want two to three times that paid to their tribunal colleagues.
If even a fraction of these costs is awarded, the tribunal bills will run into hundreds of millions of euro. The Army deafness cases will seem like a piddling expense in comparison.
As we know, the Celtic Tiger has run out of steam. Badly needed funding for the health and education services is drying up. The homeless beg daily just outside the gates of Dublin Castle and its inward-looking figure of Justice.
So do we have the money to continue funding this kind of extravagance?
My difficulty is not with lawyers charging whatever the market will support; if cash-laden corporations want to spend large sums on often underwhelming silks, that's their business. But market forces hardly apply for State-funded work such as the tribunals. As last week's Competition Authority report pointed out, the legal sector is riddled with restrictive practices.
The Irish Bar has many fine traditions - independence, intellectual rigour, pro bono work. The tribunals have done excellent work, much better than was originally expected. But this constant looting of the public purse is indefensible. The immorality of political corruption under investigation at the tribunals has been replaced with a new immorality of legal greed.
I am not arguing that the tribunals be shut down. The reasons for which they were set up are as valid as ever. But reforms are urgently needed.
For a start, they should follow the money trail, and nothing else. All the big breaks enjoyed by the Flood tribunal came about as a result of financial sleuthing in well-hidden bank accounts, rather than anything said in the witness-box.
Second, remove the lawyers from the process to the greatest extent possible. Interview witnesses on their own, as the Scott inquiry in the UK did some years ago. Use lawyers for what they were intended for - making submissions and drafting legal documents - rather than for work that an accountant, garda or other investigator might better do.
For many years, the scales held by the figure of Justice in Dublin Castle tilted, as water and leaves gathered in her trays. Eventually, the problem was solved by the simple expedient of drilling a hole in the trays. If only the problems of real-life justice were so easy to solve.