Moriarty wrote that he didn't accept Dunne's evidence that Dunne couldn't remember handing over up to £280,000 sterling to the former taoiseach. Dunne interprets this as being called a liar. There was he was on Tuesday and Wednesday, shouting and roaring on the radio, lashing out at the poor judge. An apparently amiable chap, Dunne once used to tell us that his better value beat them all, but now he's peeved that his credibility is in the bargain basement. Give over, Ben. Look to your fellows to see how to react properly to a tribune of the little people.

Dunne's outburst is notable in that he purports to give two hoots. Others who supported Haughey, such as Dermot Desmond, simply convey contempt for the tribunal. Moriarty found that Desmond made payments to Haughey after he had left office, but was unable to conclude whether there were payments prior to 1994 because it didn't have access to either man's offshore accounts.

Desmond's reaction included a line about he and Haughey sharing "the same vision of a new, prosperous Ireland", which sounds great. Further on, in relation to offshore accounts, he noted that it was not unusual for people like him, who live outside the country, to have bank accounts outside the country. Did the vision he shared with Haughey for their beloved country include residing offshore for tax purposes?

Then there are the likes of Michael Smurfit, who was found to have been indifferent as to where his 50 grand for the party would end up, or "ought to have apprehended" that Haughey would grab it.

Mick just said he rejected it. Such aspersion on his character won't affect the greeting he receives on the fairways of the K Club.

Kerry businessman Xavier McAuliffe was found to have made an "indirect payment" to Haughey by investing £50,000 in Celtic Helicopters, a vehicle for Ciar�?n Haughey. McAuliffe just rejected the findings. No hysterics. No aggro. Any finding by a tribune of the little people won't make a blind bit of difference to him.

As with AIB, the blue-chip market leader in our roaring economy. It has kept schtum over the finding that it made an "indirect payment or benefit equivalent to a payment" by wiping out Haughey's £1m loan. No individual or business is going to withdraw accounts from an institution that has repeatedly been exposed as crooked over the last few years.

So why is Ben getting his knickers in a twist?

Nobody, least of all in business circles, cares what went on. Everybody who matters is doing well now.

In any case, he doesn't have a leg to stand on. He may have medical records showing he was prone to memory loss at the time, but he did tell the tribunal that he had a good memory, and he was running a multimillion-pound business.

So Moriarty was not impressed. In fact, he had a right dig at poor old Ben on page 238. "It is the tribunal's view that Mr Dunne was at all times fully aware of all of the payments which he made to Mr Haughey, and the tribunal cannot accept that he had any absence of recollection, " Moriarty wrote.

"It appears to the tribunal that Mr Dunne was selective in the information that he provided to the McCracken tribunal, and deliberately confined his disclosure to those payments which were discoverable at that tribunal."

Now, if any pernickety lawyer in the DPP's office looked at that closely, he or she might conclude there were grounds for prosecution for obstructing McCracken.

Dunne's other issue is with Moriarty's finding that a favour was extended to the retailer from Haughey. Who cares? The favours Haughey handed out for bribes were few and far between. His real crime was handing over the influence vested in him by democracy to a group who kept him in the style to which he believed was his right.

His attitude, and the kernel of his betrayal, was contained in his own evidence, delivered to the inquiry six years ago.

"There are many public-spirited people who subscribe to political parties and to individual politicians and who have no anticipation of anything other than the political success of the individual? because they are running a country well, because they are engaging in initiatives which are beneficial to everybody."

In this analysis, the donors intrinsically know what is beneficial to everybody. They aren't elected. They are, for the most part, drawn from business. But they know what is best for the little people, and their man in the little people's parliament shares their vision, so they throw money at him or his party, to ensure their vision for the common good is well looked-after.

And if there is a conflict of interest at some stage between, say, big business and public services, well, their man in parliament knows which side his bread is buttered. He knows what is beneficial to everybody. From the donors' point of view, influence rather than favours is far more beneficial in the long run.

So it was that the health service had to be battered in the late 1980s. The public finances were in rag order, so the little people had to cough up, lie down, and in some cases die for the cause.

At the other end of society, wholesale tax evasion was afoot, nowhere more spectacularly than in the Cayman Islands, where Haughey sat atop the Ansbacher fraud. Even if he had been of a mind to rein in tax evasion, even if he himself wasn't immersed in the offshore rackets, he couldn't have moved against it. Doing so would have been akin to running amok in his Gandon mansion, tearing the joint asunder in an act of self-destruction. His interests were bound up inextricably with those of the upper echelons, for it was among them he regularly passed the hat.

The influence exercised is not something that can be defined at a level on which a tribune of the little people could rule. Thus Moriarty left it at:

"This cannot and does not give rise to a finding that all other acts or decisions in public office on the part of Mr Haughey during the relevant years were devoid of infirmity."

The efforts to rehabilitate Haughey's legacy will continue, but Moriarty has done the state some service in laying out the damning reality. "He was a patriot to his fingertips, " Bertie Ahern declared of his mentor at his graveside last June.

Bob Dylan had something to say in that vein too.

"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings. Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you a king."

What the report says. . .

About Haughey "The very incidence and scale [of payments to Haughey], particularly during difficult economic times nationally, can only be said to have devalued the quality of a modern democracy."

"The tribunal is satisfied that a sizeable proportion of the excess funds collected [for Brian Lenihan] were misappropriated by Mr Haughey for his personal use."

About Bertie Ahern "The practice of pre-signing cheques? has to be viewed as both inappropriate and imprudent."

About Ben Dunne "It is the tribunal's view that Mr Dunne was fully aware of all payments which he made to Mr Haughey and cannot accept he had any absence of recollection."

About AIB "The degree of forbearance shown by AIB constituted an indirect payment, or benefit equivalent to a payment."

About Dermot Desmond "The tribunal cannot accept Mr Desmond's evidence that these payments were otherwise than outright dispositions made by him to Mr Haughey, notwithstanding Mr Desmond's characterisations of them as loans."

About the Revenue Commissioners "It is understandable that it was not easy at the time to address the contingency of a very powerful political leader whose cooperation and disclosure left a great deal to be desired, but even in retrospect the passivity shown in aspects of the relationship appears inordinate."

What they said about the report. . .

T�?naiste Michael McDowell "The report gives us a unique insight into highly controversial events in Irish political history."

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern [about pre-signing cheques] "IT was an awful tragedy? entirely wrong and inappropriate. The vast majority of cheques were for appropriate purposes. I brought in the legislation that would decide how the party leader's allowance was used, how it would be open for it to be used. We didn't wait for the conclusions of Justice Moriarty's report but I welcome them and thank him."