How long before the Toledo Mudhens angle in the Abu Ghraib scandal?

As we've noted before, the seemingly excellent relations between the Irish Republic and the USA under Dubya's Presidency are likely related to the marked similarities between Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Dubya: a shared ability to mangle the English language, and an uncannily similar approach to scandals, in which they display a studied naivete concerning things that they must have known about, and then any actual investigation is deferred to interminable committees and tribunals which at some later point will produce vast reports and pursue many tangents, by which time the public will have safely moved on to other issues.

Dubya still has a few things to learn from Bertie in this regard, who has been carefully kicking scandals into touch (=Tribunals of Inquiry) for ten years. One such tribunal has now reached its reductio ad absurdum, as today's Irish Times reports (subs. req'd; non-subs. link here):

The Moriarty tribunal is to begin hearings tomorrow into the £4 million purchase of the Doncaster Rovers football ground by Mr Denis O'Brien in 1998.

The tribunal is inquiring into the matter because the English solicitor involved in the purchase, Mr Christopher Vaughan, wrote a letter at the time to Mr Michael Lowry, in which he said he had not until then appreciated Mr Lowry's involvement in the deal.

So somehow, an investigation of political corruption in Ireland has turned into something about one piece of correspondence related to the sale of a lower division Yorkshire football club's ground? Truly a masterpiece of misdirection by Oirland's ruling class.