The opinion polls delivered the warning. And in their by-election this week, the people of Tipperary South drove the message home. An Independent, Seamus Healy, topped the poll and took the seat. Tom Hayes added two percentage points to Fine Gael's general election vote. Labour lost the seat but held its share of the vote.
Fianna Fail, which had expected to top the poll, dropped almost 15 percentage points and came third. Barry O'Brien may have been its first candidate to be eliminated before the final count in a by-election.
It's an ominous lesson for mainstream politics, for the coalition Government and for Fianna Fail in particular. It has been a long time coming.
When the latest Irish Times/MRBI poll showed the Government's satisfaction rating, at 48 per cent, almost as low as it had ever been, and support for FF and FG apparently in freefall, Jack Jones sounded the alarm. Three questions, he said, should be of concern to politicians: why are so many no longer turning out to vote? Why are so many dismissive of the political establishment? And why do so many feel it doesn't matter who is in government?
As it happened, the 57 per cent turnout on Thursday, although down over 11 points from the constituency turnout at the general election, was an improvement on recent showings elsewhere. And Fine Gael's performance was far better than many had expected: some commentators had spent the past week putting the finishing touches to John Bruton's political obituary.
Meanwhile, Mr Healy's 30 per cent underlined both mistrust of mainstream politics and support for his workers' and unemployed group, which already has seven members on local authorities.
Mistrust is clearly the reason for the collapse of support for Fianna Fail, suggesting that, in this instance, the electorate has been more discriminating than usual.
Mr Healy himself insisted yesterday that corruption had been "at the core of this by-election" and repeated his constant message that "the rich and powerful have been creaming off the profits" of Ireland's current prosperity.
Jan O'Sullivan of Labour said that Mr Healy had also benefited from "the anti-politics" generated by the Government's scandalous behaviour. Charlie Flanagan of Fine Gael had no doubt: the O'Flaherty issue had been raised at most doors.
Noel Davern of Fianna Fail forlornly claimed that FF hadn't engaged in auction politics during the campaign for fear of bringing politics into disrepute. But he admitted: "The issue (of standards) did take hold in the last ten days or so."
This was obviously a feeble understatement: little else had been in the news since Bertie Ahern responded ambiguously to poll findings on the O'Flaherty affair which could hardly have been more emphatic.
Mr Ahern's ambiguity, interpreted by some as a tactic designed to encourage Hugh O'Flaherty's withdrawal from nomination to vice-presidency of the European Investment Bank, was taken by Mary Harney as an attempt to escape responsibility.
While the Opposition, commentators and a punch-drunk electorate waited for the result of yet another coalition disagreement, the former judge, his wife and some friends in the media attempted to drum up support.
The inter-party row was complicated as usual by Mr Ahern's evasion and by an attitude which refused to be tied down to what was right or wrong, wise or unwise, but in any and every circumstance, expedient.
Fianna Fail's attitude to parliamentary accountability is cavalier at the best of times. When the party finds itself in a corner, the only issue, as far as its leaders and spokesmen are concerned, is how to get out of it.
Of late, though, led by the example of Charlie McCreevy, Mr Ahern has begun to mix evasion with arrogance. So he ended an interview in which he'd failed to answer questions but wished the O'Flahertys well with a shrug: "End of story." It was his version of Ray Burke's line in the sand - the arrogant assertion that he could decide when it was time to refuse further questioning and move on to other business.
Mr McCreevy, who has long held the view that no one has a right to ask him any question about anything, turned up in the Dail on Wednesday not to explain why he'd decided to nominate Mr O'Flaherty in the first place, but to throw a sly spanner in the works.
Then it was the turn of Sean Ardagh, who is chairman of the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Rights, to demonstrate how little right and wrong mattered when FF's interests were at stake. Mr Ardagh admitted on Morning Ireland that Mr O'Flaherty's appointment was wrong; he regretted it had been made - but only because 68 per cent of the electorate objected to it. However, since the decision had been taken by the FF-led government and he was a Fianna Fail TD, he supported it - 100 per cent. Even David Hanly was surprised.
Mr O'Flaherty's own astounding pattern of confusion and contradictions has been clinically explored here and elsewhere by Fintan O'Toole (see Page 12). The judge, you may remember, first offered to appear before Mr Ardagh's committee, then - after he'd resigned - refused on grounds that to be answerable to politicians would infringe the separation of powers.
All I can say is that if he'd appeared before any selection committee worth its salt and put in a performance like those this week on Today FM and TV3, he wouldn't have got the job. But, then, with Mr Ardagh in the chair, who knows?
So, with crisis upon crisis waiting to be resolved, the Government has decided to go into hiding from the end of next week until the first week in October.
The unions, the tribunals and the health services will go their merry way. The Government doesn't meet its crises head-on. Certainly not by going to the country, as it should. It doesn't stand its ground and square up to its opponents in the usual way. At a time of unprecedented uncertainty, the Government will be beyond the reach of parliamentary accountability.
dwalsh@irish-times.ie