There was big stuff around last week, but it got little attention. It involved the minister for justice, and concerns his suitability for high office.

Simply because Michael McDowell is a politician who divides opinion should not deflect from the questions that continue to swirl around him. The questions have been suppressed, but came popping up again last week, larger now, but still going unnoticed by many in the media.

The current issue of Villagemagazine carries an account of a surreptitious visit by McDowell to private investigator Billy Flynn, at Flynn's home in a remote outpost of Co Meath.

Flynn is credited with opening the can of worms of garda corruption in Donegal, which led to the Morris tribunal. McDowell was aware of Flynn, as the investigator had frequently sent letters to the department, and the attorney general's office previously occupied by the minister. Then, on 10 June last year, days before a crucial Dail debate on the Morris report, McDowell shows up at Flynn's home.

Two days later, McDowell was waving around a letter on RTE's Questions and Answers, which he says shows Flynn wrote to his predecessor Nora Owen in 1996. This was an attempt to deflect criticism from his own handling of the affair.

Normal politics, you might say, but is it acceptable that the minister for justice go to the home of a potentially crucial witness into corruption in the gardai to dig dirt on another politician? Could you imagine Dermot Ahern doing it? Mary Harney?

Brian Cowen? What desperate pursuit compelled the minister to act so recklessly?

McDowell denies that he went to Flynn to dig dirt, but two days later he was dishing it. He claims Flynn contacted him about a meeting.

Flynn claims it was the other way around. Why would either lie? Phone records . . .

the means by which Flynn broke the Donegal scandal . . .

could provide some answers.

Other answers are still required from the minister as to whether or not he undermined the role of the DPP. On Wednesday, McDowell was interviewed on Newstalk 106 by Eamon Dunphy. He told Dunphy that the gardai were still investigating whether individuals travelled on false passports to Colombia in 2001.

Why bother?

There will never be any prosecutions because the minister last November declared Frank Connolly and two others guilty. McDowell denied at the time that he was undermining the DPP's function. If investigations are ongoing, this contention is simply unsustainable. It also remains unclear as to whether or not he broke the law in leaking elements of Connolly's garda file. Is it not high time there was an inquiry into his actions?

An inquiry is also crying out as to whether the minister had any role in leaking garda files pertaining to the businessman Phil Flynn.

Flynn has accused McDowell of doing so, but the minister refused again to address the allegations when pressed by Dunphy. At the time of the Connolly affair, McDowell said at least twice that he would do the same thing "again and again and again".

Did he in the case of Flynn?

Are the public not entitled to know if the minister believes himself to be above the law?

Among the insights Dunphy elicited was McDowell's belief that the Provos have sleepers at every level of Irish society, ready to spring into action when required.

For those of us not imbued with the minister's searing imagination, that sounds either fantastic or paranoid.

The threat posed to democracy by the Provos is fast receding. Any potential threat posed by a minister for justice acting with impunity is one that demands swift action. A functioning democracy would have sought independent answers to the questions swirling around the minister long before now.