In July 1995, a most unusual and intriguing advertisement appeared in The Irish Times. Placed by a Newry firm of solicitors, Donnelly Neary and Donnelly, it offered a £10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of anyone involved in corrupt land rezoning.

The Newry solicitors were acting for anonymous clients - known to The Irish Times and other media organisations - who had become very concerned about the continual rezoning of amenity and agricultural land and the persistent allegations that much of this was corruptly arranged.

"It is widely believed that the rezoning process is influenced by those who stand to become multimillionaires if the tracts of land they have assembled are rezoned," the solicitors said. "Those behind the reward believe it is regrettable that the State has never sought a prosecution in this area."

Indeed, the sponsors of the £10,000 offer had to go outside the State and engage the Newry firm to act for them because several firms of solicitors in Dublin had declined to do so. Not only was their initiative seen as quite unorthodox; its very subject was regarded as too hot to handle.

Within weeks, Donnelly Neary and Donnelly had been contacted by 30 people - including Mr James Gogarty, whose allegations against the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Burke, are at the centre of the current controversy.

In August 1995, the sponsors of the £10,000 offer issued a five-page statement expressing amazement that neither the Garda nor any member of the government had "seen fit to make an approach to our solicitors" or to avail of their own willingness to co-operate in any investigation.

They condemned this "official inertia" and called for a public inquiry into allegations of land rezoning corruption in Co Dublin and elsewhere. Underlining their frustration, they said they were prepared to make available to the media "those of our sources who are willing to go public" with their allegations.

"This is not blackmail," the sponsors declared. "It is the resort of persons forced to take action in an arena which, outside of a banana republic, should be the realm of government."

There was a remarkable unanimity in the reaction of the political establishment. The then minister for the environment, Mr Brendan Howlin, said that while he was "totally committed to rooting out corruption" in the planning process, he was "not prepared to do so on the basis of threats from anonymous sources".

His Fianna Fail shadow, Mr Noel Dempsey, who has now succeeded Mr Howlin, said it was "very difficult to accept the bona fides" of the sponsors of the £10,000 reward when they continued to issue "veiled threats about `outing' public officials and politicians without producing any evidence of wrongdoing".

In his statement at the time, Mr Dempsey said of the reward sponsors: "When this controversy dies down, as it inevitably will, all they will have achieved is publicity for a firm of solicitors in Newry and a cloud hanging over the planning process in Dublin and over public officials and politicians."

Some time later, Mr Howlin was made aware of the nature of some of the more serious claims - including Mr Gogarty's allegations against Mr Burke - and it was put to him that he should meet the sponsors. But although he was supplied with their phone number, he did not make contact with them.

The then minister for justice, Mrs Nora Owen, was also made aware of the principal allegations by Mr Tommy Broughan, Labour TD for Dublin North East, who had interviewed Mr Gogarty. She was also unenthusiastic about establishing a public inquiry into the matter.

Successive governments of all political hues have shown a marked reluctance to probe this murky area where politics and planning meet. There is a widespread suspicion among senior politicians that the can of worms may be so large that they dare not prise it open because this might bring down the political establishment.

The dogs in the street have known for years that there is something awry in the planning process. It wasn't just that Dublin County Council's small public gallery was often packed with landowners and developers waiting for rezoning votes; there was also a visibly close relationship between them and several key councillors.

Not one member of the county council, or its successor bodies in Fingal, South Dublin or Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, has ever stood for election on a rezoning ticket. Yet it is also a fact that for long periods, particularly in the 1980s, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and some PD and independent councillors did little else but rezone.

In July 1993, a series of articles in The Irish Times on land rezoning in Co Dublin threw further light on the process by which the county council had been virtually transformed into an estate agency. It detailed numerous allegations of corruption, inevitably without being able to name those involved because of libel laws.

One developer's agent said: "There is a certain number of people in that council chamber who put a value on their votes. They are the power-brokers who can bring five votes with you, or five votes against you, depending on how they're looked after." The system worked on the basis of "straight cash in brown paper bags".

We interviewed a businessman who said he had handed a white envelope containing £2,500 in cash to one councillor in a successful effort to persuade him to change his vote on a key rezoning decision. He had offered the same amount to another councillor who turned it down because he wanted more.

The series of articles, which ran over a period of five days, led the then minister for the environment, Mr Michael Smith, to request a Garda investigation of these reports of money changing hands with a view to the DPP instituting criminal proceedings. Mr Smith said he viewed the matter "with the utmost gravity".

But the Garda investigation, which was headed by Det Insp Michael Guiney, soon found itself hamstrung by two almost insurmountable problems. Firstly, it could not guarantee immunity to those making allegations of corruption and, secondly, no legislation had been enacted in this area since the foundation of the State.

This is still the case, unless one were to except the notoriously weak Ethics in Public Office Act brought in by the Rainbow Coalition. As Mr Willie O'Dea TD pointed out in 1995, the laws on political corruption would make it "virtually impossible" for the State to mount a successful prosecution against corrupt politicians.

"Irish law on bribery and corruption is, for the most part, obsolete," he wrote. As he pointed out, the basic legislation in this area is the Prevention of Corruption Act of 1906 which was "designed to meet the requirements of a world which no longer exists" and is couched in outdated, obscure and even meaningless language.

The only other piece of legislation which the Garda would have to rely on is another Prevention of Corruption Act, passed by the British parliament in 1916. But it deals specifically with bribery in relation to public contracts and is, therefore, of little value in prosecuting cases of corruption involving the rezoning of land.

Small wonder, then, that the Garda investigation of 1993 got nowhere. An earlier inquiry in 1989, headed by Det Supt Brendan Burns, also ran into the sand for similar reasons. It resulted in the unsuccessful prosecution of one senior planning official on charges of accepting a bribe to arrange a planning permission.

At that time, eight years ago, there were reports that one Dublin county councillor, a senior county council official, a solicitor and a builder had formed a highly-influential "ring" that made large amounts of money by arranging land rezonings and planning permissions. But the Garda could not prove that this ring existed.

The media are also hamstrung. Fear of being sued for defamation under the libel laws is the principal reason why the latest series of allegations have been appearing on a "drip-feed" basis in recent months. The story involving Mr Burke has been published incrementally, even though the media have been aware of it for the past two years.

In the US, the whole story could have been published at the outset under the press freedom guarantees in the First Amendment to the US constitution. This enables newspapers to print stories about public figures "in good faith" without running the risk of being sued for defamation.

That, after all, is how the Washington Post was able to get to the bottom of the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s. But there is a saying that, if Watergate had happened here, Nixon would still be president and "Deep Throat" would be in jail. Or at least we would probably know who he was from the gossip in Doheny and Nesbitt's.