You take your life in your hands these days if you happen to be asked by the State to inquire into a matter of major public concern. Prof Des O'Neill, who produced the report on the Leas Cross nursing home, found out the hard way that doing the State some service is a risky business.
There are circumstances where there is a clear necessity for a full statutory tribunal or commission of inquiry, complete with all the cumbersome legal paraphernalia. However, there are other cases, such as Leas Cross, where a more limited but considerably faster inquiry process may be preferable.
Those asked to perform the latter task are carefully selected. Their specific expertise and their independence are critical determinants. They are the kind of people the public will both believe and trust.
Their verdicts are consequently enormously influential in shaping both public opinion and government policy in the wake of allegations of injustice, wrongdoing or incompetence.
Given that it is the State which invariably appoints such individuals, and that most subjects of inquiry concern State business in some shape or form, it is clear that there should never be even the slightest suspicion that the State or its agents have sought to influence the outcome of any inquiry.
Prof O'Neill, a consultant geriatrician, had been asked to examine the records of residents at Leas Cross in response to the enormous public concern provoked by the RTÉ Prime Timedocumentary on the nursing home.
Last May, he delivered his report to the Health Service Executive (HSE), with its now well-known conclusion that conditions at Leas Cross amounted to institutional abuse of the elderly residents.
He was also highly critical of the HSE for its lack of proper monitoring of the home. It should be remembered that it was the HSE itself which had commissioned his investigation.
For almost six months, the HSE sat on his report. It cited legal difficulties as the reason for the delay in publication. We now know that what in fact was happening was that the HSE was pressurising Prof O'Neill to revise the entire report by including the responses of those criticised within it.
Prof O'Neill refused to do so, saying that this could involve quasi-judicial oral hearings, with all sides legally represented, in other words a full-blown tribunal, and was in any event outside his terms of reference.
It was at this point that he received a letter from the HSE which can be reasonably construed as containing a threat of the most serious nature. The letter stated that "the indemnity which you consider you have from the HSE may not apply".
For anyone investigating and reporting on major public scandals, an indemnity is clearly vital. It means that the State will protect them in the event that anyone who they determine responsible for wrongdoing or incompetence might sue for defamation.
Without such an indemnity, those who agree to take on the responsibility of investigating issues of public concern simply cannot function. The possibility that they could be sued in their private capacity for their public findings would make it impossible for them to report the truth without fear or favour.
What is particularly disturbing is that this is not the first time the State has threatened to withdraw indemnity from an investigating group.
Madonna House was the largest residential childcare home in the State during 1980s and into the 1990s. When it emerged that a number of children had been sexually abused there over a long period, the government responded by appointing an inquiry team.
Its report was published in 1996, but with the striking omission of almost all the sections dealing directly with who knew what about the abuse, when they knew and what they did about it. The official reason for the complete excision of entire chapters was that it was done "on legal advice".
The members of the inquiry team were told by the State that if any part of the banned sections was leaked publicly, their indemnities would be immediately withdrawn from them, and they would become personally liable should anyone sue.
This threat was so effective that the truth of what happened in Madonna House remained secret for years.
The use of the indemnity threat seriously questions the integrity of all future non-statutory inquiries and reviews of the Leas Cross kind. While Prof O'Neill refused to back down, he has himself said that he felt he was "in an exceptionally exposed position".
Although the HSE did eventually withdraw its letter raising questions about Prof O'Neill's indemnity, the whole affair has fatally undermined the State's credibility in assuring us that independent inquiries can and will expose the whole truth of any scandal, past, present or future.