SCANDAL IS NO HANDICAP TO THE OIREACHTAS GOLF SOCIETY

THE return of an annual outing for the Oireachtas Golf Society was inevitable, but the stain of the 2020 scandal will not disappear.

There were shameless attempts to recast the entire messy affair as an hysterical overreaction in February, when charges against four men arising from the 2020 gathering were dismissed.

Notable figures in the affair found their voices after months of silence, expressing ambitions for future projects, or talking of compensation.

That talk didn’t get very far, because there was no tolerance for it.

What happened in Clifden was a disgrace, plain and simple, given the dreadful privations many people were having to endure at the time. And the return of the society and its big day out is no retrospective justification, either.

The golf society need not be cast into oblivion forever, but one supposes it will try to go about its business in the anonymity that surrounded it before that ill-fated day in Clifden.