The immediate source of their angst was a story in this newspaper.

The story had many parents, glorying in seven different bylines. In recent times, such a practice has become known in the US as gang tackling, as in: "The story of George Bush's recurring alcohol problem was gangtackled by the seven members of the Washington Post's political desk." The Tribune story wasn't so much gangtackled as wrestled to the ground and given a severe hiding . . . but it was a cracker all the same and it was no surprise there was such a huge follow-up to it, and that it caused such a fuss.

One of the themes of the election campaign was opposition insistence that Fianna Fail promises were unrealisable and unsustainable and that once the election was over, cutbacks would have to be introduced. Fianna Fail denied this but, shortly after the election was over and the new government formed, this newspaper obtained a Department of Finance memo from earlier that year which expressly stated spending cuts were inevitable.

It even outlined what some of those cutbacks would have to be. In other words, Fianna Fail had knowingly misled the voters and, not for the first time (or the last), had lied its way to a general election victory.

In September of last year, the newly re-elected prime minister of Hungary was caught on tape admitting his party had lied during the election campaign which had taken place the previous spring. "We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening, " he said in a conversation with ministers.

The reaction in Hungary was swift. Massive riots took place in the country's capital, Budapest, and hundreds were injured over the course of a few days. In local elections that followed shortly after, opposition parties won a significant victory.

In Ireland, we all know by now, the anger of 2002 quickly dissipated.

Over the following few years, it was replaced by periods of outrage about all sorts of other issues during which, yet again, people filled the newspaper letters columns and the airwaves with their anger at the terrible things the government had done. We're finished with Fianna Fail, they threatened. Won't get fooled again.

Just over a year ago, for example, the nation was in a lather over the CC case, which saw a defendant walk free after the Supreme Court found that the law creating the offence of statutory rape was unconstitutional. As with the Tribune story of 2002, all hell broke loose. RTE's Liveline, Irish broadcasting's padded cell, was full of demented ravings from listeners: one 15-year-old girl told the programme she "and all of my friends are afraid to walk anywhere alone, especially when sick men are walking free." Another woman worried that hordes of paedophiles were about to descend on Ireland.

Fianna Fail and the PDs, it emerged, should have known this loophole existed and done something about it.

Their failure to act left them open to a week of the kind of hysteria we have seen recently over Aer Lingus's decision to axe its Shannon-toHeathrow route. But the fuss died down, as the fuss over Shannon will die down. And Fianna Fail lived to fight another day, just as they will assuredly live to fight again this time. In Ireland, memories are short.

Hungary, this is not.

To a great extent, therefore, the whole Shannon airport story of the last two weeks, in so far as it affects Fianna Fail prospects at the next election, has been so much baloney.

Bertie Ahern's party has been in government for more than 10 years now and if it has learned one important lesson in that time, it is that it can perpetrate almost any outrage, short of gratuitous violence, and know that, come polling day, the electorate will have forgotten what it was it used to get so worked about.

That is why, up to today, we have heard nothing from Bertie Ahern on the Shannon story. He has been able to enjoy his holidays, with nothing to worry about other than the occasional rustling of nearby bushes.

In Ireland, we have a different relationship with democracy than they do in Hungary. There, the right of the people to vote and to have a say in their own affairs has only recently been won and is therefore more dearly cherished. The idea that politicians could lie to win an election is consequently regarded with enough horror to spark riots on the streets.

In Ireland, memories of our difficult transition to independence and democracy exist now only in our most senior citizens. We take for granted what was once the very summit of our ambitions. The result is that we have no expectation that democracy can be a force for change or an opportunity to pay politicians back for whatever incompetence they have foisted upon us in the preceding years.

The inevitable consequence of all this, of course, is incompetent rulers who have no great fear of what the electorate might do to them. Incompetence and uselessness become the rule rather than the exception, the expectation rather than the unpleasant surprise. Parties who suggest that there might be a better way are regarded with suspicion, as harbingers of unwelcome change.

Fianna Fail hasn't behaved badly over Shannon and deserves no opprobrium for the events of the last few weeks. The electorate in the midwest, however, which has voted consistently for the party over the years (even when it privatised Aer Lingus) and which will inevitably do so again, deserve any brickbats coming its way. In voting for privatisation, and the consequences of privatisation, those voters brought about the pain they now claim to be feeling. Sometimes it's not the government's fault; it's ours.