Departure of Mr Justice Flood: The Flood tribunal will survive the departure of Mr Justice Feargus Flood, but it may never feel the same again.
It's not just that a new name will have to be found for The Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments (the official title). The diminutive 74-year-old chairman brought colour and character to his tribunal, lifting it above the pallid hues of other inquiries.
His tussles with reluctant witnesses and argumentative barristers and his success in bringing octogenarian whistle-blower James Gogarty to the witness stand earned him a place in the popular imagination from the moment the tribunal started public hearings in 1998.
As events in Dublin Castle started to resemble a vaudeville act, with Gogarty trading insults with the lawyers on a daily basis, it fell to Mr Justice Flood to maintain a semblance of order.
His efforts were recorded in re-enactments on Vincent Browne's radio programme, thereby copperfastening his renown, albeit through the voice of actor Joe Taylor.
Soon, Mr Justice Flood was involved in a row of his own, with senior counsel Garrett Cooney, though this disagreement was eventually defused through the offices of the Bar Council.
He was an unlikely choice for chairman of the tribunal when it was set up in November 1997. At 69, Mr Justice Flood was well past the normal pension age and near enough to the retirement age for judges, which then stood at 72 years. Described by his colleagues as a "perfect gentleman", he had been a High Court judge since 1991 without attracting much attention.
He was born in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, but otherwise his background was typical Law Library - son of a banker, education at Castleknock College, UCD and the King's Inns, home on the Hill of Howth. Mild-mannered, inscrutable and a touch pompous, he was considered in his days as a practising barrister to have Fianna Fáil leanings. The length of his career can be gauged from the fact that he worked on a famous libel case involving the poet Patrick Kavanagh in the early 1950s.
The tribunal was originally expected to last a few months, but Mr Justice Flood stuck to his task as the months turned into years. In later life, he had found celebrity and it was clear that he liked it. His interventions on the floor of the tribunal were rare enough, but they always had a purpose to them.
Mild words often cloaked a firm intent together with a hint of threat. In April 2000, he asked former government press secretary Frank Dunlop to "reflect" on his evidence - to devastating effect.
A year later, he cut short Liam Lawlor and referred the recalcitrant TD's case to the High Court. Mr Lawlor spent six weeks in jail for failing to co-operate with the chairman and his tribunal.
As the tribunal's remit was widened, the workload grew ever greater. In 2001, Mr Justice Flood asked for more judges to sit on the tribunal, but it took almost a year to find and appoint them.
The tribunal has completed just three modules of investigation in five years and has 20 more to do, so it was inevitable the judge would leave at some stage.
Concerns about the length of the inquiry and the fees paid to lawyers were forgotten last year when the chairman issued his interim report on payments to Mr Burke. The report's direct language and its finding that the payments were corrupt won critical and popular favour.
With hindsight, it might have been the perfect moment for the chairman to bow out.
