Millie Masterson of Mayor Street was right about An Bord Pleanala's decision on the proposed Spencer Dock development, though her reasons were clearer than the board's.
God gave everyone the right to see the sky, she said. It wasn't for people with big cheque books to take it away. But, as she reeled off the politicians who'd helped the residents campaign against the project and those about whom she had doubts, she added: "You never know who's in these people's corner."
The people of the North Wall, who would have been left in the freezing shadow of a 22-storey building, had been supported by Independents and members of Labour and Sinn Fein. Bertie Ahern, who called the plan a monstrosity, was "sitting with a foot on either side of the fence".
Her scepticism was in tune with the times, as Ahern and his colleagues now know. But saying what kind of country you don't want is a first step; deciding the kind of country you do want comes next in the process of change.
The wider electorate has made its opinions clear for a variety of reasons in a succession of polls carried out for The Irish Times, Sunday Independent and Sunday Tribune. Tipperary South left no room for doubt in its by-election.
But, in the coverage of tribunals, for instance, we tend to hear more often about who did what, when and where than about the message conveyed by the events disclosed.
We find out who the anonymous contributors to FF funds were; we hear a lot less about the nature of Irish society which this exposes. As John Horgan said years after Nixon's shamed resignation: if this had happened in Ireland everyone would know who Deep Throat was, and Nixon would still be in office.
We get to know how, where and with what whispered advice brown paper envelopes changed hands; we pay less attention to the extraordinary way in which not only cronyism but shared political and financial interests link the richest and most powerful people in the country.
So Mark Kavanagh donated (or intended to donate) £100,000 to FF; his company, Hardwicke, had already been awarded a £100 million contract at the International Financial Services Centre.
Michael Smurfit, a tax exile, returned to the State, briefly, to give evidence about a £60,000 donation which mysteriously found its way into Charles Haughey's hands. Smurfit is Ireland's honorary consul in Monaco. Another tax exile, Dermot Desmond, boasts that he's willing and able to help Haughey financially. The Haughey government appointed him to the board of Aer Rianta; NCB, the company of stockbrokers he founded, handled a number of valuable public contracts.
Larry Goodman was one of the donors to FF funds whom Haughey preferred to keep anonymous in the party's books. When a Haughey-led government decided on a drive to promote beef exports, one of Goodman's companies was chosen to lead it. And, for good measure, almost all of the State's export credit insurance was made available to support Goodman's own drive in Iraq.
It's seldom we glimpse the golden circle at play or playing at once the roles of godfather and fairy godmother to Irish society. The grand banquet in Adare that followed the J.P. McManus golf pro-am was such an occasion.
Bertie Ahern was there. So was Albert Reynolds. Gay Byrne was master of ceremonies. Smurfit, Desmond and a posse of businessmen showed up and, between the golf and an auction, raised more than £11 million for charity.
But as they waded through gushing coverage some may have had the feeling that several of the rich and supposedly generous participants had come to their attention already, not separately but as a group.
And, sure enough, there they were, the principal actors in the Johnston, Mooney and O'Brien affair; stars of an official report by Insp John A. Glackin who investigated Chestvale Properties and Hoddle Investments.
Chestvale and Hoddle were two of the companies through whose hands ownership of the J.M. and O'B. site passed from the moment of its sale by a liquidator for £4 million in 1989 to its purchase by Telecom Eireann for £9.4 million in 1990.
Smurfit was chairman of Telecom then, but the inspector found he wasn't financially involved in the deal. Nor did he know that - according to the inspector - his friend Desmond was using his name to encourage investors. But McManus was a source of funds and took a share of the profits; shares were also held by Joseph Lewis (as nominee or in trust for McManus).
Tracing the history of the Ballsbridge site from liquidation to Telecom was a bit more difficult. Desmond fought all the way to the Channel Islands and back through a tangle of legal argument before being named as the controller of Chestvale and Hoddle.
The polls and by-election are not the only signs of public dissatisfaction. Trade unionists are plainly dissatisfied with the way the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness is being reduced - by inflation and profit-taking - to a Programme for Prosperity.
The new director-general of IBEC, Turlough O'Sullivan, advises the public not to panic. But the rate of inflation, estimated at 3 per cent when the programme was negotiated, has had to be adjusted to 4, 5 and 6 per cent.
The PPF has been in operation a mere two months and the unions are alarmed. Wage increases have been overtaken. Pensioners and those on fixed incomes or welfare are pressed hard.
The Government's responses are pathetic. Charlie McCreevy's motto has been, like a giddy pools winner's: spend, spend, spend. Others think fiddling with the price of drink and arguing about the decelerating rate of acceleration in house prices will do the trick.
(Older readers may remember the hilarity that greeted Garret FitzGerald's "decelerating rate of acceleration" in the 1980s).
But more and more, thoughts are turning to serious change in both the social compact which has proved so successful, and to the prospects offered by a political Opposition which has made slow headway.
If action isn't taken, if the Opposition parties don't come up with a set of ideas to fill the gaping hole where vision ought to be, what then? The most chilling answer was given by a youngster interviewed by Keelan Shanley in Prime Time's programme about troubled children and homelessness on Thursday.
The question was: "Have you been in prison?"
And the answer came: "Not yet."
dwalsh@irish-times.ie