The legal profession will poo-poo the notion . . . they will growl that the Supreme Court is hermetically sealed from outside influences, etc, etc. But what other conclusion can be drawn from Friday's surprise decision that resulted in Mr A being returned to prison?

"The Supreme Court listens to Liveline too, " one close observer commented in Leinster House last week. The line was halfin-jest and wholly in earnest. The person was signalling that the widespread assumption that the Supreme Court would rubberstamp the earlier High Court decision on Mr A might be misplaced. How right he proved to be.

There's a quiet fury within government over what they perceive to be RTE Radio's racheting up of public outrage towards the government over the past week. It is clear that the anger is directed mostly at Liveline and the Gerry Ryan Show, both of which went big on the crisis last week.

The level of public outrage over the Mr CC and Mr A cases is such that nobody in government will risk going public on their annoyance with RTE. There will be no official complaints. They know that the public will regard it as passing the buck if they cry foul.

The station has a statutory requirement as a public service broadcaster to offer balanced coverage. But people close to the government were last week privately describing some of the coverage as "highly irresponsible". One source fumed: "They are setting themselves up as some kind of alternative Robin Hoods. But let them come in here and try and stop all the potential loopholes that we are dealing with."

They believe that the coverage took no account of the virtually impossible hand that the government was dealt once the Supreme Court found Section 1 (1) of the 1935 Act to be unconstitutional. There was nothing the government could have done differently that would have stopped Mr A getting out (temporarily, as it later proved) of prison, they say. No retrospective legislation, even if it had been ready to go and signed into law an hour after the Supreme Court knocked down Section 1 (1), would have altered that outcome. And, in that point, they are right.

And there is widespread derision for the notion that the government could have acted to bring in the defence of reasonable mistake as to the age of the victim as recommended by the Law Reform Commission.

People in government believe they would have been savaged on the very same radio programmes if they even attempted to do.

The Tanaiste summed up the feelings of many in government when she said in the Dail: "I suspect, and I am being honest about this, that if any deputy had done so [proposed a defence of reasonable mistake] he or she would have been accused of writing a paedophile charter. That is what would have happened. They would have been accused of watering down the strong legislation."

The irony of last week's events is that they highlighted just how effective the Dail can be. A fired up opposition pressurised an out-of-touch government to act and quickly introduce legislation. Yet watching the protesters outside the Dail, listening through large speakers, to live broadcasts of Liveline - one observer likened it to a scene from George Orwell's 1984 . . . it was impossible to ignore where the real power lay.