Correction. An anonymous mid ranking civil servant is to blame . . . for an "administrative error". . . and what the consequences are for him, or her, is seemingly not a matter for the public, but an internal departmental disciplinary affair.

Nobody expected much more of the Sullivan report. Once its terms of reference were narrowed to shine a torch into the labyrinthine workings within the attorney general's office, we all knew there would be one result . . . a dead end.

Depressingly, once again we see no real accountability within the civil service . . .

despite benchmarking and the public service's repeated calls to be paid (but obviously not treated) in the same way as the private sector.

And we see no accountability among our politicians. There was a real failure by both the attorney general Rory Brady and the minister for Justice Michael McDowell in this case. For them to wash their hands of it and to blame civil servants for not reporting to them the imminence or the seriousness of a constitutional case their officials were jointly fighting at Supreme Court level is a nonsense.

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will explain why it returned Mr A, the selfconfessed child rapist at the centre of last month's political maelstrom, to prison even though it had just declared the law under which he was convicted null and void.

No doubt the attorney general and the minister for justice will be listening closely to this case . . . after all it was that decision that saved their political hides.