The question is this: if somebody commits a crime, and while fleeing the crime, or leaving the scene, he takes respite in a particular place or with a particular person, is that person or the people who own that place complicit in the crime? If, having killed somebody, or assaulted somebody, you stop off to recharge your batteries or rest, is the person who facilitates your rest to be regarded as a participant in, or at the very least a facilitator of, the crime?

I'm pretty sure that the trio mentioned above would all answer in the affirmative if that question was asked of them. If gardai brought to justice a man or woman who had helped somebody following the commission of a major crime, Messers McDowell, Ahern and Ahern would be falling over themselves to congratulate them on a job well done. And they would be entirely right to do so.

When, however, Ireland is the facilitator of such crimes, Messers McDowell, Ahern and Ahern are nowhere to be found in condemnation of what is going on. In fact, as last week proved definitively, when Ireland is the facilitator of such crimes McDowell, Ahern and Ahern become the three monkeys of Irish foreign policy, refusing to see, speak or hear of any evil that may have gone on at Irish airports during America's so-called "war against terror."

Dermot Ahern's behaviour last week was particularly shifty, the Taoiseach's wilfully ignorant.

To Dermot Ahern firstly. Within government, he is probably regarded as having done a good job for Ireland last week, having managed, with his department officials, to move the goalposts, not once, but twice, in the debate over rendition flights which have passed through Shannon airport. He firstly fulminated over the draft report on rendition flights issued by a European parliament committee.

Ahern was due to address the committee a few days after the release of the report and was outraged that the committee had issued the report before talking to him. "Ballydung Urban Council would not treat you in such a manner, " he said.

Ballydung Urban Council sounds like it might have a Fianna Fail majority, so the minister was probably right in surmising that they would have treated him nicely.

On Ballydung Urban Council, an extraordinary rendition would be the chairman's enthusiastic version of 'Danny Boy' at the Christmas party. Nevertheless, the minister had a minor point, and made the most of it. By jumping the gun, the European parliament committee had allowed Ahern to change the focus of the argument from the nature and number of the rendition flights through Ireland to whether he had received the respect to which he felt entitled.

While Ahern was moving that particular goalpost, his department officials were engaged in another sleight of hand. "At no stage" had any prisoners been rendered through Ireland, a spokesman said in response to the European parliament report, even though the report had never suggested this.

What it had expressed, however, was "serious concern" over 147 CIAoperated flights which had stopped over at Irish airports. Many of these were coming from or were on their way to countries with proven links to the transport of prisoners.

In one case, according to evidence given to the committee, a CIA plane which had been used to transport a prisoner called Abu Omar to Egypt, where he has been tortured ever since, refuelled in Shannon on the way home.

Which brings us back to our original question. Does somebody who is involved in the latter stages of a crime, giving succour to the criminal and facilitating his journey from the crime scene, bear any responsibility, legal, moral or otherwise, for the crime? Is the Irish government, by allowing its airports to be used by planes which have transported illegally detained prisoners, complicit in this crime?

For all its talk about getting tough on home-based criminals, the government is particularly flaky about doing the same when it comes to taking on the Americans.

It has a stock response to accusations such as those made by the European parliament committee: we have no evidence, it says, that these flights have come through Ireland. And in any case, we have received assurances from the US administration that no renditions have taken place.

The reason the government has no evidence is that it has never looked for any. As far as I am aware, no garda officer has inspected a suspected CIA plane at Shannon.

Indeed, no garda officer would be stupid enough to board a suspected plane knowing that his superiors, right up to the Minister for Justice, have no interest in the inspections of such aircraft, and would tear what is left of their hair out if such inspections were to take place.

In relation to the assurances from the US administration, the government is being deliberately misleading. McDowell said last week that three US government figures had told him that no prisoners had been rendered through Ireland. These assertions may be true, although we will never surely know, given our lack of interest in inspections.

Is McDowell also saying, however, that no CIA plane on its way to or from a rendition has used an Irish airport to refuel and that the Americans have also assured us of this? He needs to be clearer. Even if we accept that no rendered prisoner has touched down on Irish soil, how can he be so sure that no torture plane has ever done the same while going to or coming from a rendition?

One final point on American assurances. Last week, the Taoiseach said that he had looked at the "great" George Bush (you could spend the next week analysing the use of the word great) and "said to him: 'I want to be sure to be sure' and he assured me." All we can do in response to that kind of dogged investigation of the facts is to coin a phrase: "He who accepts the assurances of a fool is himself a fool."