O'DREARY

Another tribunal is afoot. It's being planned right now. They're calling it the tribunal to end all tribunals, the ultimate tribunal, the tribunal's tribunal, Tribunal the Barbarian. Its official title though will be the O'Dreary Tribunal, as it will be chaired by Judge Donal O'Dreary. The tribunal's aim will be to find out, once and for all, who it was exactly 'banjaxed the nation'. It is said that suspects will undergo thorough interrogations. However, an avant-garde approach in truth seeking will see the suspects being referred to as 'clients' and the interrogations being called 'chats' and the 'chats' not being all that thorough. No need to be adversarial I suppose, you catch more bees with honey.

The clients will drop into Donal for chats (receiving generous financial compensation for the time taken to do so) and it is hoped that a culprit or culprits will be identified during the course of these chats so that something might be done maybe going forward you never know like.

A valid concern expressed by one of our nation's leaders is that 'it was probably a hape of lads that did for lovely old Ireland' and that to identify these 'lads' by name would be 'commercially insensitive' as it would dissuade this self same 'hape of lads' from investing in 'lovely old Ireland' again.

Do not worry though, a solution to this dilemma has been devised and it is a solution that is typically Irish in its lateral cunning. The hope is, you see, if you follow me now, ...the hope is that the suspects, I mean clients, will put their interrogation, I mean chat, wages, I mean compensation, back into lovely old Ireland and reinflate the property bubble, I mean market, going forward.

That's the idea anyway. Unless, as Judge O'Dreary pointed out himself, the culprits turn out to be Travellers. 'If it turns out to be a bunch of dirty knackers that wrecked the place', said O'Dreary from the doorstep of his Killiney home, 'I'll come down on them like a ton of bricks. A TON OF BRICKS!'