On Wednesday, the Tallaght Echo reported that a company of builders . . . the biggest in the country, apparently . . . was lavishing gifts on councillors in the South Dublin area.

Menolly Homes, which has a bit of previous in this regard (it once paid the incorrigibly corrupt Liam Lawlor £40,000 to "posh up" the address of a development it was building), had gotten its hands on some Ryder Cup related goodies and was anxious to pass them on.

For some reason, the councillors of South Dublin were chosen to be beneficiaries of this noble act of philanthropy. Many of them duly received offers of tickets or hospitality to the event.

One councillor, Sinn Fein's Shane O'Connor, was contacted three times by somebody from Menolly trying to give him tickets. He didn't accept.

Another councillor told the Irish Independent that he had been offered a corporate package worth 3,500, well over the value of gifts which local politicians must declare.

The Tallaght Echo's story, and the publicity that followed it, has almost certainly meant that South Dublin councillors who had envisaged being able to get up close and personal with Tiger Woods in three weeks time have now found something more important to do.

By the end of the week, the number of councillors with other plans for the fourth weekend in September was truly impressive.

These included Cllr Maire Ardagh, the wife of Fianna Fail TD Sean Ardagh, who initially was only too delighted to make the trip to Straffan courtesy of Menolly Homes before somebody had a word in her ear and she changed her mind.

"I'm delighted to go in the same way as I'd be delighted to go to another event, " she said before her husband announced her u-turn. "We get invited to all sorts of events."

This you might describe as a typical Fianna Fail response . . . entirely blase about the party's close relationship with builders bearing gifts and completely tone deaf to how this kind of thing might go down with a public attuned to the myriad ways that the body politic has been corrupted by councillors . . . mainly from the Fianna Fail party . . . who have accepted payments, bribes, donations, contributions (choose your own euphemism) in order to make developers' desires come true.

None of this is to suggest that Menolly Homes is looking for anything more than a smile of gratitude from the public representatives of South Dublin. It does not currently have a planning application before the council although, according to Friday's papers, a development which would include apartments and a hotel in Newcastle, Co Dublin is at the pre-planning stage. We must therefore take its offer of Ryder Cup tickets at face value . . . as a sympathetic attempt to help some of our hard-working local representatives de-stress by giving them a day out at the golf.

As we're on the subject of sympathy, I suppose we should reserve some for Cllr Ardagh, whose views on what is an appropriate relationship with builders may to some extent have been formed by watching the behaviour of her party leader during the course of his political life.

A man who was happy to appoint Ray Burke and Liam Lawlor to key positions, and who, no questions asked, wrote blank cheques for one of the most corrupt leaders in recent European history (that'd be Charles Haughey, in case you're wondering) carries, by definition, an air of Fianna Fail dodginess around with him.

It is in his relationship with corrupt builders that the Taoiseach really comes into his own, however.

I'm thinking particularly of the tax-dodging, tribunal-obstructing Bailey brothers, Michael and Tom.

On the day that the story about the Menolly munificence broke in the national press, the Irish Independent revealed that the Baileys faced being banned from running their own companies.

According to the story, the director of corporate enforcement, Paul Appleby, will later this year seek to have the brothers disqualified as company directors by the Commercial Court. "This would prevent the pair from having any involvement with their company, Bovale . . . or any other firm . . . for a fixed period of time or even permanently, " the story said.

Appleby's move against the Baileys is unprecedented in Irish business history and comes just a few weeks after it was revealed that the brothers had made a 25m settlement with the Revenue Commissioners in relation to unpaid tax going back more than 20 years. (And let us not forget that Michael Bailey made a £5m settlement back in 2000. ) Like the Taoiseach, there is a whiff of dodginess about the Baileys. As well as their enthusiastic tax evasion, they and their company played a key part in the Flood tribunal, which found that Michael Bailey had given a £30,000 under-the-table payment to James Gogarty, and that he had obstructed the tribunal's workings.

I'd be able to tell you a bit more about Michael had his financial records not been, terribly unfortunately, destroyed in a fire on the very same day that the Supreme Court was to decide whether he should have to give them over to Flood.

Anyway, Michael and Tom are members of Fianna Fail, according to Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte.

They are also, Rabbitte pointed out in the Dail, "prominent donors to [the Taoiseach's] party and attendees at every significant Fianna Fail occasion. What signal does it send out to tax-compliant citizens, " Rabbitte asked, "that the perpetrators involved in this episode [the 25m settlement] are feted at every significant event held by the Fianna Fail party?"

The most recent of these events was the Galway Races, where Michael Bailey purchased a table at the Fianna Fail tent, which was also visited by the Taoiseach. The races were held just a few weeks after details of the tax settlement were revealed.

The message from the Taoiseach was clear: tax evasion does not put you beyond the pale; we welcome support from tax dodgers; my party's view of gifts from builders is one of high tolerance.

Maire Ardagh didn't lick it off the stones.