That was the overriding message from the High Court's ruling last Tuesday on the matter of The Irish Times's refusal to reveal its sources on the story the paper broke about Bertie Ahern's finances. The paper's representatives engaged in an "astounding and flagrant disregard for the rule of law", the three judges ruled. Bad move. Nobody is above the law, or so we're told anyway.

The court ruled that the paper's editor, Geraldine Kennedy, and the story's author, Colm Keena, must provide answers to the Mahon tribunal about the source.

The story broke in the paper on 21 September last year. It revealed that Ahern received money from benefactors when he was the minister for finance. The story was based on a letter sent by the tribunal to David McKenna, one of Ahern's benefactors, requesting details of the transactions.

One upturned stone tipped over others. Ahern was subsequently exposed as receiving money from multiple sources over a two-year period in the mid 1990s. His explanations for the receipt of monies have been barely credible. We still don't know where Bertie got all his bobs.

There is no question but the Irish Times story was in the public interest. At the time, it was quite possible that the public would not have got to hear about Ahern hoovering up all that money. There was no guarantee that the tribunal would conduct public hearings into the matter. In the end, the hearings were conducted only because Ahern was so slow in coming clean with the details of his finances, and his explanations were so ropy.

The tribunal was put out at the leaking of confidential information.

Kennedy and Keena were summoned to explain. They revealed that the McKenna letter had been destroyed after they received the summons, so as to protect the source. Apart from that, the only info they were willing to impart was name, rank and serial number.

Mahon's lawyers referred the matter to the High Court, from whence last Tuesday's ruling was handed down. The judges were very annoyed about the destruction of potential evidence.

"The deliberate decision taken by the defendants to destroy the documents at issue in this case after they had received a summons to produce these to the tribunal and after having taken legal advice is an astounding and flagrant disregard of the rule of law, " they said.

They went on to fume that this "reprehensible conduct is a relevant consideration to which great weight must be given in striking the correct balance between the rights and interests at issue in this application". Taking that into account, the judges came down in favour of Mahon. Kennedy and Keena must 'fess up, or risk going to jail.

One interesting aspect of the case is the different approach taken to observing the law by Kennedy and Keena on one hand, and Ahern and his lieutenants on the other. The journalists did disregard the rule of law. They did so on the basis of journalistic principle, which may not be a valid excuse to most people, but it puts their transgression in context.

On reflection, it might have been wiser to publish the story without details of the letter. That could have provided protection against any subsequent inquiry by the tribunal.

Self-interest could have got a better place in the pecking order beside the public interest in devising the story.

Kennedy chose to publish the letter and then destroy it and be damned.

As a result, the fallout for her and the paper is greater than perhaps it might have been.

The approach to the law by Ahern and his ministers is of a different hue. After publication, a succession of ministers berated "leaks from the tribunal".

In the weeks that followed, every TV and radio appearance by a minister included a mention of "leaks from the tribunal". There was not a scintilla of evidence that the leak came from the tribunal, but the spin was designed to undermine public confidence in an inquiry that was investigating why Ahern was hoovering up cash.

The politicians were careful not be too specific, lest they be hauled before the inquiry and accused of undermining an instrument of the Oireachtas, of which they were leading members. Junior minister Noel Treacy did overstep the mark and was dragged into Dublin Castle. But he was small fry, far enough removed from the apex of government.

The effect of the ministers' spin was to heighten fears in the tribunal that public confidence in it was being undermined. That was the main plank of its application to the High Court to force the journalists to answer whether or not the inquiry itself was the source of the leak.

Behind the scenes, Ahern's attitude to the law was also curious.

Despite his public protestations of "volunteering" cooperation, it took the tribunal two-and-a-half years to extract all the details from him.

In that time, he swore an affidavit that omitted a transfer of �50,000 to Celia Larkin, an unusual omission for a man renowned for his astuteness and attention to detail.

Unlike Kennedy and Keena's "flagrant disregard" for the law, Ahern's approach appears to have involved prodding and probing at the law, taking it to the limit of compliance and pulling back just before he strayed too far. It was an approach laced with cynicism and concerned only with the preservation of selfinterest.

Since then, he has given four days of testimony in the tribunal witness box. Not even his closest ministers . . . apart from the amazing Willie O'Dea . . . would argue that the detail of his evidence is credible. Yet to have broken any law by his actions, it would be necessary to prove perjury, and that is notoriously difficult.

So while the messengers have been berated from the bench, the subject of their story sails on, careful to stay on the right side of the law, affecting the air of one who has been unfairly hounded.