Take last Wednesday, and the appearance of Ray Burke, his first outing since the sixmonth spell he did in Arbour Hill.

For anybody who has come of age in the last decade, it should be pointed out that Burke is the reason the tribunal was set up in 1997. It started out as a stray 30 grand, Bertie Ahern climbing trees in north Dublin, and "the hounding of an honourable man".

When the thread was pulled, all manner of dirt came tumbling down. Ray hadn't just been naughty with 30 grand, he had been taking sweeties for nigh on 30 years.

He was also the only person to go to jail as a result of the tribunal's workings. (George Redmond did a spell too, but his conviction was overturned. ) Last Wednesday, however, you could be forgiven for thinking that Ray was the honourable one. His evidence suggested a man who was attempting, Canute-like, to hold back a tide of rabid councillors, intent on rezoning half of north Co Dublin, in order to win favour with developers.

And, crucially, there was documentation to support his evidence.

The inquiry is investigating the rezoning of 70 acres in Balheary, near Swords, in 1993.

The land was owned by the Christian Brothers, and sold to a developer with Fine Gael connections, Joe Tiernan.

Frank Dunlop lobbied for the rezoning. He has told the tribunal he bribed four councillors with the princely sum of £1,000 a skull, to have the lands rezoned.

Burke was opposed to the rezoning. He was, he told the tribunal, opposed to much of the rezoning that was going on in his constituency at the time.

He even went as far as to express his concern to then Minister for the Environment, Michael Smith. He asked Smith not to ratify the Dublin Development Plan at the time because of the rezonings.

The tribunal has seen a letter Burke penned to the leader of the Fianna Fail group, Betty Coffey, expressing his concern.

"There was general disquiet about the level and amount of rezoning going on at the time, " he told the tribunal.

This is sterling stuff. At the time of the Dublin Development Plan, rezonings were a badge of honour among most Fianna Fail and Fine Gael councillors. Many among them weren't corrupt, in that they didn't receive specific amounts for specific favours.

But nearly all of them were in receipt of "legitimate political donations" from developers. These payments were on the strict understanding that favours were out of the question. However, by coincidence, the interests of the councillors and developers tended to dovetail through a demented programme of rezonings that turned muck into gold. And last week, we heard that Rambo Burke was opposed to much of this carry-on.

He was, he told the tribunal, defending the interests of his constituents. "I had every right to defend their interests as they saw them, " he said.

"The people were decent enough and elected me on the first count 12 times there."

There may well have been sound reasons why he stood four-square against the promotion of the interests of councillors and developers in favour of those of his constituents. In most of these rezonings, Dunlop, by his account, was handing out bribes of one, two and three grand. In a few cases he splashed out with five.

That fare was beneath Burke. He only dealt in amounts starting at 30 grand.

The tribunal was established on foot of James Gogarty's allegation that Burke was paid 30 big ones in 1989 to secure a rezoning in, guess where, north Co Dublin. He wasn't able to keep his side of the deal, but he kept the money anyway.

He hoovered up at least another £250,000 in his career, but thankfully none of it was attributable to dodgy rezonings in north Co Dublin. There was plenty of scope for corruption elsewhere. So maybe he was working to a twisted morality. Nobody was going to mess with his constituents, but anybody else was fair game.

He did deliver one other missive from the high moral ground on Wednesday. He said rumours of corruption were all around in the council in the early 1990s. This contrasts sharply with the memories of a number of councillors, who had never heard of brown paper bags at the time.

Burke recalled newspaper coverage, which included an Irish Times piece headed 'Cash in Brown Paper Bags for Councillors'. And he recalled Michael Smith's "debased currency" speech about planning.

"We live in a grown-up world and I've no doubt they would be aware, " he said, referring to councillors' knowledge of the rumours. "Unless they were blind."

On Friday, Fine Gael's Therese Ridge gave evidence to the tribunal. She was first elected to Dublin County Council in 1984. She told the tribunal that she had never heard any rumours of corruption until April 2000, when Frank Dunlop began to sing.

It's a strange, strange world up there in Dublin Castle.