Six years ago, Ray Burke explained his attitude to the answering of questions in the Dail: "If the other side don't ask the right questions, they don't get the right answers. And it's not for me to lead them as to where they figure they want to go. And if they ask a question, then that question is answered precisely."

Information is a form of power, and Mr Burke did not see it as the business of ministers to cede power to "the other side" - the Opposition, the media, the public - by revealing anything which could possibly be concealed.

Then came a series of scandals and crises which shook the political establishment and brought down some leading figures, among them, of course, Mr Burke. After the beef tribunal, the Brendan Smyth affair, the hepatitis C disaster and the unmasking of Charles Haughey, it was obvious that such attitudes were not just wrong but self-destructive. In a more open society, it was no longer tolerable for public business to be conducted through closed circles of influence and information.

These lessons applied to the whole political system, but they should have had particular force for Fianna Fail and for Bertie Ahern. He became Taoiseach knowing that each of his two Fianna Fail predecessors had been destroyed by their failure to deliver on the rhetoric of open government. With the Flood and Moriarty tribunals digging into the party's recent history, he knew, too, that he had to put a wide distance between himself and the political culture from which he emerged.

Yet this week it became clear that that culture is alive and well and living in Drumcondra. If the real Ray Burke continues to haunt Fianna Fail, his spirit has obviously not been exorcised either.

Without going into the complications of the Sheedy affair, there is one indisputable fact that emerged this week: Mr Ahern made an untrue statement to the public. He told RTE that Mary Harney had not asked him to tell the Dail about his representations on behalf of Philip Sheedy. And then he admitted that she had done so.

While he effectively apologised to his Government colleague, he expressed no regret that he had misled the public. Nor did his Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue, express any unease about his own statements last Sunday that the information about Mr Ahern's involvement in the Sheedy affair had been withheld because it might be damaging to the Taoiseach, implying that possible embarrassment justifies concealment.

There is no real sense, in other words, that either man has grasped the basic point at issue. They seem to feel that the mistake which was made was upsetting Ms Harney, not withholding information from Dail or telling citizens something that was not true.

From the evidence of another Minister, Dermot Ahern, to the Flood tribunal, it seems clear that the failure to give a full account of the Taoiseach's involvement in the Sheedy affair was not an aberration.

To put it at its mildest, Bertie Ahern had more grounds to suspect Ray Burke of improper behaviour than he indicated either in appointing him as minister for foreign affairs or in the subsequent Dail debates on his resignation. If he was serious about inaugurating a new era in Fianna Fail and distancing his incoming government from the past, the decision to appoint Mr Burke to the Cabinet was, again to put it mildly, surprising.

Yet, perhaps more disturbing than any of these things which have outraged the Opposition are the things which seem to cause no outrage in political circles at all. Even in the attacks on Bertie Ahern, the point stressed again and again was that the issue was not the representation he made on behalf of a prisoner, but the fact that he did not disclose it.

The working assumption seems to be that it is perfectly normal for the Taoiseach and other politicians to involve themselves in the administration of the criminal justice system. Having quiet words about the fate of particular prisoners is, it seems, par for the course. The core of the Sheedy case, however, is the contention of the Chief Justice that the actions of former Judge Cyril Kelly "compromised the administration of justice". For that, Mr Kelly, and Mr Hugh O'Flaherty, were forced to resign under threat of impeachment by the Dail.

Yet, when senior politicians make representations to the Department of Justice with the aim of altering the fate of certain prisoners, the administration of justice is apparently not compromised.

In fact, though, the powers of Ministers for Justice to interfere with the administration of the law are supposed to be strictly limited. A previous Fianna Fail holder of the office was seriously admonished by the High Court in 1995 when a former district justice challenged the way she was reducing or remitting fines which he had imposed in court. The High Court declared that she had "misapplied her powers". She, in fact "appeared to have exercised a kind of parallel system of justice and to have purported to have administered justice".

The Minister for Justice has, under the Constitution, some prerogative powers to remit sentences. But the High Court made it clear that these powers are meant to be used "sparingly" and in exceptional circumstances. Critically, the High Court also found that the Minister had to act accountably. It is "constitutionally necessary that all the evidence and information leading up to and the reasons for the exercise of the power be recorded. This is a consequence of the special nature of the power and is necessary to ensure the accountability of those exercising the power in question."

The implications of this judgement are clear. Political interference in the sentences imposed by the courts should be rare and unusual, not routine. It should happen only for stated reasons. And Ministers should be accountable for the way they use it.

Yet, according to Bertie Ahern's statement to the Dail on Wednesday, his "What's the story?" inquiry about Philip Sheedy was treated by the Department of Justice as "a routine inquiry".

The Minister for Justice, apparently, continues to be bombarded with "routine" requests to second-guess the courts.

"Numerous inquiries are addressed to him all the time relating to all manner of cases by deputies from all sides of the House."

This sounds oddly like a "parallel system of justice". It seems, too, that the High Court judgement against Maire Geoghegan-Quinn has had little impact on the prevailing attitudes to the use of ministerial powers. But then, since the dominant political culture has taken so little notice of the lessons from the scandals of the last decade, why should it take any notice of the courts?