Feargus Flood has been harassed by some of the most powerful people in the country. He and his tribunal's key witness, James Gogarty, have been taunted by many thoughtless - and a few more sinister - commentators.
Flood persisted with the task given him, not by a faction or party but by the Oireachtas; and, in the interests of the Irish people, he has identified the corruption of former minister Ray Burke and of several businessmen among Burke's associates.
It is for other holders of high office to follow where Flood leads, examining the performances of those who, like Burke, set out as servants of the people and ended up controlling and corrupting more than they served.
Bertie Ahern pretends that he set up the Flood tribunal to investigate payments to Burke. He did not. The Dáil did.
Ahern claims that Fianna Fáil leads the way towards new and more open standards in public life. It does not: he and his party take minimal action but only as a last resort and when there's no way out.
This was true even in the case of P.J. Mara, whom Flood named as having failed to co-operate with the tribunal: it took until lunchtime yesterday for Mara to resign as Fianna Fáil's campaign director in the Nice referendum. Ahern suggested on Thursday that the decision could safely be left to the director himself. The streak of cynical manoeuvring which has been a feature of Ahern's career as party leader and Taoiseach marked the appointments - and retention - of both Burke and Mara. Burke was first given a Cabinet post by Charles Haughey and dropped by Albert Reynolds. Haughey had allowed him to retain the Communications portfolio even while serving in other Departments (he was for a time minister for justice): it gave both Taoiseach and minister an opportunity to carry on an ideological campaign against RTÉ.
Burke's case for supporting Century Radio, even to the point of capping RTÉ's revenue, was that he favoured a level playing field. (This was the point of the NUJ's proposal yesterday of a commemorative award featuring a level pitch and a brass neck).
Mara, too, was fond of double-jobbing: in 1997, when he was Fianna Fáil's campaign director in the general election, he was also one of the most active advisers to Independent Newspapers and was said by some to have encouraged the use of the front-page editorial, "It's payback time", which favoured Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats.
When the general election was called this year, Mara cheered: "It's showtime again."
But if Ahern and the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrat coalition refuse to take themselves seriously, there are signs that others hold a sterner view.
The latest in the series of Irish Times/MRBI polls shows that the Government's satisfaction rating is down 25 points - from 61 per cent to 36 per cent - since February. Ahern's popularity has also been damaged: it stands at 51 per cent , 21 points lower than when preparations for the general election were in hand and when all but a few observers considered his position impregnable. In the meantime, Fianna Fáil's core vote has dropped seven points - to 32 per cent - while its adjusted vote fell by 8 points to 34 per cent.
But, of more immediate concern, perhaps, the prospects for the Nice referendum are less secure than they've been, with the gap between Yes and No votes down to 12 per cent and with almost 40 per cent either undecided or claiming that they won't vote at all.
The Government's position has certainly not been improved and may well have been damaged by the performances of those sent out to bat on its behalf since the publication of the Flood report.
Government Whip Mary Hanafin justifies Ahern's reticence by saying that it took Flood all of five years to come up with his conclusions; the Taoiseach could scarcely have been expected to do much better than the few sentences he muttered at the Ploughing Championships on Thursday.
As for the bearing that Burke's misfortunes might have had on Fianna Fáil, her plea that the party could not be blamed for the failures of one man simply sounded pathetic.
Burke's, as we all know, was not a singular case. He was preceded by Haughey, Lawlor, Flynn, Ellis, Foley, Frank Dunlop and a whole choir of county councillors (from whom we should be hearing shortly).
Michael McDowell's excuse was little better: the Burke affair, he said, was a thing of the past - as though the Government had taken to ordering tribunals into misfortunes to come.
We should not forget the accounts of a recent Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party meeting in Killarney that reflected on the dismal state of our public finances. There were headlines in the Sunday papers such as "Bertie shows dissidents who's boss" over reports announcing that, "if there's a whiff of revolt in the air it was not only stifled, it was stubbed out".
The inadvertent leak to the Sunday Tribune about expected cutbacks of €900 million was accompanied by reassuring stuff about Charlie McCreevy "playing a blinder", and about those who dared to criticise the party leadership coming away from the session in Killarney much chastened and ready for the referendum.
One commentator wrote: "The vote on Nice is a vote on Bertie Ahern's future," and ended: "When the Taoiseach realises that his own reputation and political future is (sic) predicated on delivering a Yes vote he may rediscover that he is still the most cunning and ruthless of all the big beasts that inhabit the jungle."
The commentator, Sam Smyth, ended with this gem: "A Yes vote will help repair a Teflon reputation that has been noticeably damaged since the general election in May."