Maire Cruise O'Brien nee MacEntee, the poet, Maire Mhac an tSaoi. * The mirthless laughter comes when there's another little anecdote about the republican purity of the founders of Fianna Fail, when it came to money. Maire and her sister as little girls are abruptly withdrawn from a competition for the best Irishmade party dress. "It was explained to me that if we won, people would think Daddy had used influence" . . . Daddy being minister for finance at the time.

A beautiful dinner service arrives one Christmas Eve from the then-new Arklow Pottery. "Put it back in the boxes, " her father told them when he came home. "My father could not even appear to be influenced in his decisions by gifts."

They were all like that. Then.

The nature of Fianna Fail as a party is, I think, the Big Question for those of us in the electoral middle, those of us who take our vote seriously and who have never been committed to any party. Are we or are we not going to vote for Fianna Fail this year?

Are we or are we not going to invite the same crowd that have been running the place for the last umpteen years to go on running it, as if we were the subjects of a royal family rather than citizens in an electoral democracy?

The question became Big when the Moriarty tribunal issued its report, shortly before Christmas. Isn't there some sciencefiction story when the ordinary people suddenly realise that they are being manipulated by creatures from outer space?

That's how I was left feeling by the Fianna Fail reaction to the utterly damning description of how the senior generation of their party was corrupt and corrupting. I involve a whole generation because it hardly needs to be said that Charlie Haughey was able to do what he did because he knew that there was no one in the party to challenge him. And though many other individuals and institutions were complicit in his crimes, it was from the party that he derived his power.

I listened first of all to the FF people who contacted RTE to say 'ah come on, all this is old hat, why are we wasting money on tribunals, sure there's nothing new in this'. Then I heard the family of Brian Lenihan say the same thing.

Closed book. 'That was in another country and besides the wench is dead'. No good to come of opening old wounds. Then I heard Bertie say sure wasn't everyone signing blank cheques in those days. It all came back . . . the things Bertie said when he who, as the consummate all-round insider and specialist in Fianna Fail in north Dublin could not but have known what it took Moriarty to tell the rest of us, chose to eulogise Charles Haughey in the most extravagant terms. I felt as if it had suddenly been revealed that all of us are being governed by aliens called Fianna Failers.

And now I see that the widow of the late Liam Lawlor is challenging the Mahon tribunal . . . the one about the blatantly corrupt interface between property development and land rezoning . . . in the courts, thus, probably, delaying its report until after the election. Several very rich people have challenged this or that tribunal because they might as well. It holds things up, and you never know what could happen . . . a week is a long time in politics and all that. I wouldn't have thought that Mrs Lawlor had their money, now. However. It would be of help to Fianna Fail if her initiative did delay that tribunal's report. It might help Fine Gael, too . . . when I was an observer of Dublin County Council in the 1980s, it seemed to me that certain Fine Gael councillors were just as readily on the take as certain Fianna Fail ones. But there were more of the Fianna Fail ones and they had more power and influence. Will we further consolidate the power and influence of Fianna Fail by returning it to government this year?

Remember the British policy in Northern Ireland of allowing 'an acceptable level of violence'? Well, is there an acceptable level of Fianna-Fail-looking-after-theirown that all the rest of us can live with?

Given the obvious strengths of Fianna Fail ministers . . . such as their competence and energy . . . and given the appeal of their party to Irish people like myself who, whatever they may be now, came, in terms of position or property, from nothing.

I sincerely wish there had been even one word of regret from Fianna Fail for what it allowed itself to become in the Haughey era, because that would lay a ghost and move us all on. That would open out the issues in this year's election.

But there was nothing . . . nothing but denial and bravado.

The nearest anyone came to expressing, even, shock, was Eamon O Cuiv. But then, he's a de Valera, and de Valera's impeccable personal probity was a prime value in Maire Cruise O'Brien's parents' generation.

Those, oh those were the days.

*The Same Age as the State: Maire Cruise O'Brien; O'Brien Press