This column can't be accused of having ignored it to date, and it's been widely covered elsewhere; nonetheless, the phenomenal success of the tribunal re-enactments on Tonight with Vincent Browne (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Thursday) is worth noting again.

It's probably fair to say that there hasn't been such "did you hear it?" radio in this country since the glory days of Scrap Saturday. Although it may, possibly, wear out its welcome, the worry that this approach might appeal "only" to tribunal junkies has proved redundant: the programme has created tens of thousands of such addicts.

It's also made a multimedia star of Joe Taylor, whose imitations of Gogarty, Flood, Dunne etc apparently meet with the enthusiastic approval of the standing-room-only crowds he's helped lure to Dublin Castle. The radio show is now an inextricable part of the spectacle - and it must spell reader-death for the pages of newspaper coverage of the tribunals now that we've heard it all the night before.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who are prepared to wring hands about the long-term effects of all this - barristers prominent among them. Me, I figure we'll let the long term sort all that out.

What should, and generally does, make the Tonight coverage valuable is context: the knowledge bank that Browne brings to the proceedings - his own, mostly, and that of his panellists.

So it was a let-down a couple of weeks back when Browne was joined by perhaps the most valuable expert of all on planning matters, our own Frank McDonald, and chose to heap scorn on him. Whatever cash may have changed hands, Browne insisted, the only real problem with the land rezonings in the 1970s and 1980s was that there weren't enough of them. And one big reason for that, he continued, was opposition from the likes of McDonald.

It's extraordinary that anyone can look at the mess made of greater Dublin and say we should have had more of the same. Browne's view, however, is commonplace in this boom era of obsession with the "supply" of suburban housing estates.

And so we lose sight of the real quality-of-life relevance of the Flood revelations: "planning" which is coloured by corruption and cosy relationships is not planning at all - it's a recipe for chaos. And that's the chaos Dubliners have to live, breathe and stew in every day.

It was some relief, then, to hear McDonald get another chance on this week's Sunday Show (RTE Radio 1). Unfortunately, that programme didn't make an explicit link with the scandals; still, in rounding up regional correspondents and experts to discuss the situation, it made a useful effort at grasping the phenomenal over-development of the Dublin area.

In these many-voiced, idea-packed discussions, a listener is lucky to pull out one central thought - and McDonald was on hand to provide that with his sometimes-apocalyptic vision of the future. "The Celtic Tiger," he warned, with apt disregard for the tired metaphor, "is now entering its phosphorescent phase. It's too hot to handle."

This busy, lively programme was a good example of how the Sunday Show has raised its game against the competition from Today FM's Sunday Supplement. Instead of the traditional set-piece row to an agenda set by the Sunday Independent, it went for something more constructive. The row had been disposed with earlier in the programme, when Andy O'Mahony gave Archbishop Connell's communications director, Ronan Mullins, a good going-over. Just what sort of advice, we wanted to know, was Connell getting about the PR implications of his statements?

The panellists subsequently pronounced themselves "sorry for" Mullins, who - listening between the lines - sounded like he'd tried to warn Connell about how his words would be received. Still, this weekend emphasis on Connell's PR cock-up lets him off the hook: we heard how his legitimate concern with reproductive technologies and respect for childbirth had been unfortunately tied up with this contraception thing. Isn't it just as possible that he was trying to use the widespread concern with reproductive technologies, etc., to further the usual agenda: interfering with people's sexual behaviour?

Speaking of which, Leo Enright on Sunday Supplement had the best joke of the week. An nth-time mother sits up in the Rotunda ward and says to the miserable young one next to her: "Ah, love, you don't feel it going in, but you sure feel it coming out."