The Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was asked to explain where and from whom he had received comparatively vast amounts of cash back in the 1990s. Last week, the Moriarty tribunal reminded us again that for years, we were ruled by a taoiseach who was a crook. Not unimportantly, Moriarty also reminded us that we are now ruled by a taoiseach who facilitated that crookery in an "imprudent" and "inappropriate" manner.

How the public reacts to having that past foisted upon it may well determine the result of the general election, perhaps less than 150 days away now. Do we leave our memories at the door (those of us old enough to have memories) and take the view that the present - with its untold riches, its unfeasibly large traffic jams, its unwanted tunnels, and its immoral puppets - is all that matters?

Or do we believe that the past is still important, because the mistakes that were made then, and the people who made them, continue to have a relevance and an influence into the present day?

The issue of relevance is an important one. I was out of the country when the Bertiegate controversy hit its height, so it was difficult to judge precisely why it was that the opposition parties made such a mess of the job of opposition. Could it really be, as some suggest, that people are so belchingly happy riding on the back of the celtic tiger, so easily fooled by Bertie Ahern's "man of the people" shtick - clichéd and preposterous though it may be - that they genuinely don't give a toss about anything?

This seems insulting to Irish people, to say the least of it. The idea that we have become so fat with wealth, so materialistic and acquistive that we no longer care about the country we live in (a notion that was at the heart of Archbishop Sean Brady's attack on Podge and Rodge), doesn't really stand up. Irish people are plenty interested in what's going on around them, if they feel it's relevant. For example, a book that has been impossible to get this Christmas is Ghost Plane, Stephen Grey's apparently fascinating account of the Bush administration's policy of flying prisoners around the world to countries where they will be tortured. (I say apparently, because I haven't been able to locate a copy yet; it's sold out everywhere. ) Irish people are buying this book in large numbers because they know that the issue of extraordinary rendition is relevant to them, due to the use of Shannon airport (and possibly Dublin too) by CIA planes which have transported prisoners to be tortured.

During the row over Bertie Ahern's money, the opposition parties failed to make the past relevant. By contrast, Archbishop Brady's attack on Podge and Rodge and the society he believes they represent was greatly damaged from the start by the relevance that people still find in the Catholic church's past.

On Friday, David Quinn, the Irish Independent's conservative religious affairs correspondent, pointed out that the archbishop was on a hiding to nothing when he made his speech.

"There is a crater-sized hole in the church's credibility because of the child-abuse scandals, " he wrote. "A bishop has only to open his mouth to be reminded of the scandals, and this is something all bishops are going to live with for a long time yet."

In more colourful terms, Podge and Rodge also reminded us of this when they responded to Brady's comments. The whole controversy was a perfect example of how the Irish people allow the events of the past a relevance and an influence on their lives.

Opposition parties should take heart from the knowledge that Irish people are paying attention. For sure there is a hardcore of people who believe that all this Moriarty business is a waste of time and money and has no relevance to anything. But they are fools. And for sure there are people who are young enough not to remember Haughey and the unquestioning knaves and lackeys - Ahern amongst them - who surrounded him back in the 1980s and 1990s. But they are the ones least likely to vote in 150 days' time.

The ones most likely to vote, and in large numbers, are those people who retain all their critical faculties and all of their memories of the Haughey era and who would be open to a well-argued and articulated view that the recent past has a relevance to today.

The fact that that argument hasn't been made properly yet does not preclude the possibility that it can be made in the future.

A key component of that argument would be that when Fianna F�?il - at D�?il and local council level - was selling itself to the highest bidder in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, it facilitated the creation of the basket-case country we live in today. By becoming the Builders' and Developers' Party, by supporting rezonings and planning permissions and the creation of unsuitable and ultimately unserviced estates, Fianna F�?il laid the groundwork for the infrastructural nightmare we see all around us. The four-hour commutes, the deprived and crime-ridden estates, the overcrowded schools we hear so much about all had their roots in the corruption of the party which has ruled us for most of our lifetimes and which had its dirty linen washed in public again last week.

In the middle of that corruption, signing books of blank cheques and refusing to ask the questions that any leader of gumption and courage would ask, was Bertie Ahern.

Is that a relevant observation? Or is it all in the past? After Christmas, perhaps we will find out.