designed to buy the next election for PD/Fianna Fail . . . maturing in the same week that the government proved finally and definitively that it is not up to the task of running the country.

Or with the curiosity of cabinet ministers pleading ignorance as a defence of their abject performance, while they simultaneously prepared and passed legislation which allowed for ignorance to be a defence? Or with the irritation of Brian Cowen . . . as smug and as glib as ever . . . blaming the Supreme Court for the mess over statutory rape, an insight akin to attributing last month's bad weather to Evelyn Cusack.

Or maybe we should focus on the Taoiseach fleeing the jurisdiction in response to the developing crisis, although not before taking the trouble to intervene personally in the negotiations over the national pay deal. Interesting priorities. Or on the assurance by government and legal sources that you can't legislate retrospectively, when it was Bertie Ahern who, as finance minister in 1994, introduced an amendment to the finance act which eliminated a tax liability for businessman Ken Rohan and made the change retrospective to 1983.

Hardly anybody would suggest that you start criminalising people in retrospect, of course, but the willingness of Ahern to shower backdated financial benefits on a rich man 12 years ago does contrast with the dozy and careless manner in which he and his government went about its business on the latest controversy. It's no wonder so many people are cross.

And yet it's hard not to be cross with the people too. For it was the people who re-elected PD/Fianna Fail four years ago, despite ample evidence that the government was weighed down by mediocrity, lack of imagination and the absence of any clear vision about the kind of Ireland they wanted to govern.

In any democracy, we get the politicians and the laws we deserve, and while it is arguable, to say the least of it, that the alternative to the PD/Fianna Fail government might not have handled the current controversy any more skillfully, the message of the last election was that Irish people were susceptible to being bribed by promises and commitments that many of us predicted at the time . . . correctly as it turned out . . . would never be implemented.

To the extent that we are responsible for PD/Fianna Fail's success in 2002, we are responsible for the mind-boggling incompetence on display last week.

Our influence goes further. In recent years, there has been a tendency in Ireland to overreact in an often hysterical way to particular issues that arise. That tendency is encouraged by programmes such as Joe Duffy's, many of whose listeners made contributions of the most astonishing ignorance last week. They included one from a 15year-old girl who said: "Myself and all of my friends are afraid to walk anywhere alone, especially at night when sick men are walking free".

Another woman spoke about hordes of paedophiles who were about to descend on Ireland. Another contributor commented on the kind of country where you can't smoke a cigarette in a pub, but you can rape a child there.

This kind of nonsense, which comes from the gut but has no basis in fact, logic or reason, masks the more reasoned contributions to the debate . . . which, in fairness, could also be heard on Liveline last week.

It influences the contributions of others, particularly in the media, who feel obliged to abandon their professional detachment and be seen to in some way reflect the hysteria.

And so it was on Friday that you had the normally unflappable Cathal Mac Coille announce on RTE's Morning Ireland that it was a historic day for Irish children, and Aine Lawlor interviewed barrister Michael O'Higgins in such shrill terms that, at one stage, it seemed as though she blamed him for the crisis.

This kind of hysteria scares the life out of politicians, sometimes making them act in such a hurried manner that they introduce flawed legislation. They did this on Friday when they passed an act which discriminates against boys and allows for the reputation, motives, dress sense and morality of 14-year-old girls to be trashed in court. (And just imagine the hysteria on Liveline the first time that happens).

But it also discourages them from bringing in necessary laws. Imagine, for example, if Michael McDowell had told the Dail in 2002 that the government had received legal advice that the 1935 law on statutory rape was unconstitutional, and that he was therefore introducing legislation which would allow a man to claim in his defence in court that he thought the 14-year-old with whom he had sex was actually 18.

The reaction would have been hysterical. Liveline would have been jammed with calls from angry parents arguing that the government was making life easy for paedophiles.

The same newspapers which last week were jumping up and down suggesting that the government had made life easy for sex predators would have been jumping up and down suggesting that the government was about to make life easy for sex predators.

Which is not to suggest that we should have any sympathy for McDowell or his cabinet colleagues . . . because it is the function of governments to lead on the big issues, and this one has manifestly failed to do that. The next election will not therefore be a referendum on the competence of the government (opinion polls suggest that judgement has been made already), but a test of our ability to resist the promises and bribes to come from PD/Fianna Fail.

Will we have long enough memories on election day to recall the headless, leaderless mess of the last seven days or, fresh from a SSIAenabled holiday in the sun, will we conclude that maybe PD/Fianna Fail is not so bad after all?

If we do decide that, we will deserve every political scandal that comes our way.