A venerable septuagenarian political insider is standing trial on charges that he used his public office to enrich himself and pamper his mistress. But that's in France. The health and agriculture ministers have resigned, accepting responsibility for the BSE debacle. But that's in Germany. A hugely influential minister has done the decent thing because "wrong information was given to the House and to the press". But that's in the UK.

How Roland Dumas, the former French foreign minister, Andrea Fischer, the former German health minister, her former colleague Karl-Heinz Funke, and Peter Mandelson, the former Northern Secretary, must wish the laws of political asylum allowed them to take up office in a country that takes a more lenient view of these things: the Republic of Ireland.

Roland Dumas may be facing serious corruption charges, but he impressed observers with his refusal to take refuge in old age and rickety health, declining the judge's offer to sit down while giving evidence because of his bad hip. He stood up and faced the music. Andrea Fischer was not corrupt, merely inadequate. Her explanation for resigning was, by normal standards straightforward and by Irish standards incomprehensible: the public had lost confidence in her ministry.

Peter Mandelson came out with his hands up. Though he had lied by omission rather than by brazen falsehood, he regained some dignity by uttering words that don't exist in the vocabulary of the Irish political establishment: "I accept responsibility for that."

Next Tuesday, for example, three things will happen.

The Dail will debate and almost certainly pass a gentle Government motion on Liam Lawlor, suggesting he should resign his seat if he does not co-operate with the Flood tribunal. On the German principle that politicians should resign when people lose confidence in them, Liam Lawlor would take note of today's poll findings that 85 per cent of those surveyed believe he should quit the Dail.

But to whether Liam Lawlor will resign, the answer is in the annals of the tribunal itself, in James Gogarty's account of the answer to the question "Will we get a receipt?" for a contribution to Ray Burke.

Around the same time, the Taoiseach will formally accept that he misled the Dail last October when he gave completely wrong figures for the escalating cost of his pet Stadium Ireland project. The gap between the truth and what he told the Dail back then is no small matter, made up as it is of almost £270 million.

What will happen? The Taoiseach will "correct the Dail record". If Peter Mandelson had thought of this method of unsaying things after you have been caught out, his delightful dog would still be around Hillsborough Castle. And the Ombudsman's office will publish a report on a major political scandal: the systematic ripping off of elderly people in nursing homes by health boards and the Department of Health.

If previous leaks are accurate, the report will detail the way vulnerable old people were deprived of millions of pounds to which they were entitled with the active connivance of the Department. This will raise the most fundamental questions about the relationship between citizens and the State and between government departments and the Oireachtas which is supposed to hold them accountable.

IF, as a result, the public loses confidence in the Department of Health, what are the chances that anyone will follow the example of the German health minister and resign? The words "snowball" and "hell" come to mind.

In theory, of course, we are in a new era of accountability. The Taoiseach himself spelled this out as far back as the debate on the McCracken report into payments to Charles Haughey and Michael Lowry. He told the Dail it was "unacceptable" that people who had held high office should "deliberately conceal vital information from the House or from a tribunal set up by the House".

It was also unacceptable that Charles Haughey had withheld full co-operation from the McCracken tribunal, forcing it to undertake lengthy, painstaking and costly research to establish facts which could have been established almost at once with his full co-operation. He added that "keeping offshore accounts" was incompatible with "my idea of patriotism or public duty".

While we had had "too permissive a culture over the last 30 years", he promised things were about to change. The fate of Haughey and Lowry was "a solemn warning to any aspiring deputy or any other elected representative to stick to the rules that we make". Most importantly, he acknowledged that those rules were inadequate: "The question does arise as to what standards we expect of those who sit in this House, and whether the House has adequate sanctions in respect of unacceptable behaviour. We may need to put in place, on an all-party basis, tighter rules for continued membership of this House."

This apparently firm purpose of amendment has softened. The punishment for misleading the Dail is that you have to "correct the record". The penalty for holding an offshore account, as Denis Foley did, is a two-week paid holiday from the Dail. The price of defying a tribunal, and in the process costing the taxpayer even more money, is that you get to regale the Dail bar with your prison adventures and are relieved of the burden of having to sit on Oireachtas committees.

And as for those new "tighter rules for continued membership of this House", well the Taoiseach did make judicious use of the word "may". Is it his fault if the rest of us failed to add in the implied "and then again may not".

There is, though, at least one hero to emerge from all this. One senior Irish politician did have the grace to recognise that the game was up, that he had been caught out in untruthful explanations for the acceptance of unexplained money and that he should resign not just as a minister but as a TD. For that, at least, he deserves some credit.

But isn't it a little worrying when the person we have to look to as an example of doing the decent thing is Ray Burke?

fotoole@irish-times.ie