Some good may eventually come out of the Hugh O'Flaherty fiasco if Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney heed public anger and set up new structures for appointments to plum State jobs. Cronyism has been deeply embedded in our political culture for decades, but the casual preferment of party members and supporters to State-funded positions is no longer acceptable to a well-educated society that is adopting the trappings of a meritocracy.
The public reaction to Denis Riordan's legal challenge to blatant political patronage said it all. The Limerick lecturer lost his Supreme Court case against the way Hugh O'Flaherty was chosen for the European Investment Bank position, but public sentiment was very clearly on his side. Ordinary voters woke up to the fact that a political network, from which they were excluded, continues to have an inside track on key State jobs. There was no chance of ordinary punters getting a look-in.
Under this system, qualifications are not the deciding factor in making appointments. Connections and political pull count for everything. The constitutional aspiration to cherish all citizens of the State equally has been trampled by the elite in a rush for the trough. Insult is added to injury by a system of secrecy that shrouds executive action.
John Bruton responded to the public mood by suggesting that the Government examine all applications made for the EIB job by Irish citizens, including that of Mr Riordan. And he proposed that in future all major national and international appointments should be subjected to scrutiny by a Dail committee.
Nora Owen broadened the agenda after last Wednesday's Fine Gael frontbench meeting. The deputy leader asked the Government to accept a mechanism whereby judges and former judges, who were being considered for appointments to posts outside of their normal judicial function, would have to go before a Dail committee.
The proposals were an advance on the existing system but were vague about where any cut-off point would come. Must the particular foreign job carry a salary in excess of £100,000 before it qualified for a public examination? And what about the bread-and-butter political patronage involving many hundreds of appointments to State boards and agencies?
Such appointments might not immediately qualify as gravy train material - many are advisory and non-executive and do not carry salaries. But others, in key semi-State bodies, do have quite generous directors' fees and expenses. Perhaps, more importantly, they provide the favoured individual with a system for networking and advancement. They also grant access to the inner workings of the administration.
Now, more than at any time in the past, knowledge and access is the equivalence of power, and power invariably equals money.
A little over 10 years ago the public was outraged when details of a "golden circle", linking politics and big business, were laid bare in the Dail. Public confirmation of organised and systematic skulduggery triggered the response, rather than its very existence. For, like adultery and tax evasion, corruption is often ignored until it hits the public in the face like a wet herring.
Since then tribunals have been established to plot the murky paths taken in this State by money and power, but nobody has taken an axe to the rotten system of political patronage.
That is not to say all ministerial appointments have been wrong or suspect, but there is something wrong when the last act of a government, before it is put out of office, can involve the stuffing of State agencies with the friends and supporters of appointing ministers.
Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have been the main players in that regard - but Labour has been an apt pupil and the Progressive Democrats engaged in the process with gusto. It's just a matter of scale: the larger the party in government, the greater the number of jobs at its disposal.
As one of the two major parties, and a hot contender for office in the next election, Fine Gael is not yet ready to abandon long-established perks of office. Like St Augustine, it is a case of "Lord make me pure, but not yet". They might offer new procedures and transparency for top, unspecified jobs, but further down the line the best Mrs Owen could offer was an examination of the situation.
The Labour Party has identified the issue as a vote-winner for the next election. Brendan Howlin intends to champion a complex package of reforms based on the ethics legislation Labour introduced while in government. Important, well-paid, domestic jobs will be taken from the gift of government and transferred to open competition through the Civil Service Appointments Commission. These will include positions like taxing masters, the Master of the High Court, county sheriffs, county registrars, the Ombudsman, chairman of the Labour Court and chairman of the Employment Appeals Tribunal.
The nomination of chairmen to State boards would be opened to scrutiny from Dail committees under the proposed legislation and the system of judicial appointments would be reviewed. In addition, Mr Howlin favours the vetting of senior international and EU appointments by an Oireachtas committee.
When it comes to the lowest rung of appointments to State bodies and boards, however, the Labour Party takes a rain check. Mr Howlin talks about the difficulty ministers can experience in finding the right kind of people for particular posts and of the need to persuade them to participate. Open competition might not be the way to go, he says. However, he accepts there should be advance notice of such appointments and published criteria which nominees would have to reach.
Next Wednesday, Cabinet members will attempt to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of the O'Flaherty shambles. Several names will be placed before Fianna Fail and Progressive Democrats ministers for consideration as a possible vice-president of the European Investment Bank.
Given the nature of the exercise - and the damage suffered by the Government because of the O'Flaherty nomination - it is inevitable there will be some discussion of the procedures used in the selection of people for high-profile jobs.
However, because of the current negative political climate, the Government is unlikely to unveil any reform proposals next week. Advisers took the view it would wait until the dust had settled over allegations of cronyism. Anyway, Bertie Ahern will be away in New York at the United Nations - time enough to gauge the depth of public opinion when he returns.
With Fine Gael and the Labour Party increasingly committed to the notion of a functioning meritocracy, however, - and to the gradual abandonment of well-oiled inside tracks - time is not on the Government's side.
dcoghlan@irish-times.ie
Dick Walsh is on leave