Funny, isn't it, in an era of openness, transparency and accountability that we are all so gobsmacked when someone tells the truth in trenchant terms?
Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen gained an audience far wider than those interested in prison reform when he remarked in his Inaugural Report on Prisons that he got the distinct impression that neither the Government nor the Prison Service wanted him to do any work. They would have preferred if he toured Western Australia or "read himself into the job" instead.
In another aside, he observed that the passing of the Freedom of Information Act had pushed the Department of Justice deeper into a bunker, and that "Put nothing in writing" had become the mantra.
It is refreshing to hear someone like Mr Justice Kinlen observe that mechanisms like Freedom of Information which were apparently designed to enhance transparency and accountability can have precisely the opposite effect. As philosopher Onora O'Neill observed in her Reith Lectures, when trust declines in a society, recourse to more and more mechanisms of accountability is rarely the answer.
If further evidence is needed that transparency is not easily achieved, we need only look at the sorry mess which has been left in the wake of the departure of Mr Justice Flood from the planning tribunal.
When the State began to establish tribunals and commissions as if they were the panacea for all that ails our society, the trade-off was to be that we would sacrifice a certain degree of accountability in return for uncovering the truth. It now appears very clear that we are left with neither truth nor accountability, but instead a mass of information and in some cases misinformation, which will take decades to decipher.
Some tribunals and commissions have become hopelessly bogged down. In order to plug the most obvious holes, which from the Government's point of view are spiralling costs and no time limits, new legislation was published last Tuesday.
The Commissions and Investigations Bill, 2003, provides for a simpler, leaner mechanism for commissions of inquiry, but it leaves unanswered two fundamental questions. What is wrong with our justice system that we need all these commissions and tribunals in the first place? And are a citizen's rights to defend his or her name adequately protected?
After years of tribunals, many people still cannot understand why the Garda or the Revenue Commissioners cannot investigate wrongdoing, bring charges and deal with cases through the courts.
Or if current legislation is not adequate, why can legislation not be passed, without recourse to parallel structures like tribunals? The most striking differences between courts and tribunals are the lack of consequences for wrongdoing and the lower degree of protection for an individual who has not been charged with any crime.
God knows, our criminal justice system is far from perfect, but it has safeguards that have evolved over centuries. Some of the commissions currently in operation question whether those safeguards apply to them.
For example, the Laffoy Commission considers it appropriate to name people who are dead who have been accused of child abuse. Dead people patently cannot defend themselves, but does that mean that death signals the end to a right to a good name? This is a source of great distress to relatives and friends of some of those who are accused but are now dead.
Similarly, the Laffoy Commission believes that it is appropriate to deal with cases which are in some instances over 50 years old. In a court this would not be possible, because it would be well-nigh impossible to secure a fair trial.
Why should important legal principles such as the right to a good name until due process has been observed be set aside? Laffoy's decision to publish the names of the dead in this way is currently undergoing legal challenge. If the Laffoy Commission's position is upheld, it will set frightening precedents.
The alleged aim of the proposed new commissions is to ensure voluntary co-operation. Yet if that voluntary co-operation is not forthcoming, "commissions will have a wide range of coercive powers, e.g. giving directions to attend, to answer questions, to disclose and to produce documents, powers of entry on foot of a warrant in the case of private dwellings and to seize documents and equipment and powers to make determinations and to give directions where privilege is claimed over documents."
Normally, when such draconian powers are exercised, there are equivalent protections for the individual or group involved. It is not at all clear that such safeguards exist in the new legislation.
There are a number of laudable aspects of the new legislation, such as the right of a person to know if evidence has been given to the commission which is damaging to him or her, and a right to present an alternative point of view.
But an individual has no right to cross-examine a witness who has given such evidence against him or her, or even to know the name of the accuser. No automatic right to cross-examine will certainly cut down on time and costs, but will it serve justice? The deplorable greed which some legal people have displayed does not negate the right to adequate self-defence.
Tribunals and commissions were meant to be mechanisms which restored the citizen's trust in important institutions. Instead, it looks like the restoration of trust depends on something at once more difficult and more simple - a change in mindset which means that individuals and systems operate in a more trustworthy fashion because of an ethos of commitment to the public interest.
Those systems must include sanctions which are seen to apply to all members of society when they transgress. Tribunals for the "players" and prison for the rest does nothing to restore public confidence. (And appalling prisons, according to Mr Justice Kinlen.)
Some of the tribunals and commissions in which we are embroiled at present resulted from hasty and ill-thought-out responses to public outrage. The new legislation states that the proposed commissions are to investigate matters considered "of significant public concern".
But who decides what is of significant public concern? Will it be matters concerning those who shout loudest, or who can attract the attention of TV producers? Will the new commissions be a case of shorter, snappier and cheaper, but not more just?