This used to be called the silly season but, I ask you, look at it now:
£4.3 billion to be spent on metro system for Dublin;
£2.6 million-a-day profits lift the gloom for AIB;
£1 billion for back-to-school adults;
Asylum-seeker's return puts deportation process in doubt;
Mitchell to investigate how many in the black economy.
Of course, you must look beyond the headlines for the whole story.
Dublin's road and rail system, which needed care and attention 20 years ago, will take another 15 years to complete. Welcome news of adult education comes with an admission that one million people in the state have failed to reach Leaving Cert standards.
Jim Mitchell suggests the Public Accounts Committee may need to turn its attention to the building industry; some in the industry, remembering the televised committee hearings on DIRT, think not.
And AIB chief executive Tom Mulcahy tetchily dismisses questions about the group's DIRT liability: "This is the most successful company in the history of the country and you are only interested in this."
The most successful company has the biggest DIRT liability as a result of one of the most notorious financial scandals in the history of the State. And if the question wasn't raised, the public might well ask why.
Now, as parties draw breath before getting down to preparations for a general election, politicians, commentators and public might well return to the question: how did we get into this jam and how the hell are we going to get out of it?
No one has instant or easy answers. But if we don't start asking the questions, especially in the run-up to an election, we'll find ourselves still fumbling in the dark when the contest is over.
This had been an authoritarian society until those in authority lost their grip. As bishop, politician or judge, they had always managed to retain control, if only by refusing to take questions.
Now they were robbed of their immunity, not because their authority was subverted by revolutionary design, but because they broke the trust the public had placed in them. The damage was all the greater because it was self-inflicted - and tolerated by an indulgent public.
Many still view the undermining of figures of authority as no more than a personal tragedy. They fail to see what's wrong with appointed or elected holders of office treating the State as if it were their own property, and society as if its purpose was to help them, not the other way round.
Their defenders say that, given the chance, the rest of us would do the same. But if anyone at any other level of society tries anything, they risk ending up in jail.
But, say the defenders, corruption can't be wrong, it's business. If you can get away without paying taxes or meeting standards set to protect the public, you'd be a fool not to. And the public, who suffer as a result, would be foolish to let you. That's why politicians are elected and regulators are appointed.
That's also why we can't afford politicians who have one foot in business and the other in politics; why regulators - at all levels - must have the resources they need.
This last point was made by two ironies which came to light of late. Officials are leaving the Revenue Commissioners to work in the private sector. They earn more, frustrating their erstwhile colleagues.
And planners qualify in our colleges but can't take up jobs here because they can't afford the houses. It's like spending money on hospital equipment and finding out there's a shortage of nurses to operate it.
This is why piecemeal policies are not enough and those which, for all their rhetoric, begin and end with balance sheets are worse than useless.
We are beginning to feel the advantages of freedom of information. Controls on election funding are starting to work. The debate on party funding is close to the point where the argument for a ban on corporate funding will prove irresistible.
Dail committees are working well, especially the Public Accounts Committee, reflecting the power of parliament over the executive, the Dail over the Government. But the system is blunted by the imposition of majority voting.
The Republic is a parliamentary democracy. All elements are important. Equality is implicit in republicanism, although not of the knee-breaking kind. Accountability is the essence of parliamentary democracy. And in securing accountability the tribunals, far from undermining the authority of parliament, add to its role of investigation.
It's realistic to hope that exposure and a full discussion of what's wrong with the wheeling and dealing now under scrutiny at Dublin Castle may yet lead us to a definition of the very idea most at risk - public service.
Now that blind obedience and deaf authority have vanished, we need to establish a rational code to meet the needs of the 21st century.