The Irish Times is not a quality newspaper. It fills its pages with opinion of dubious quality.

I am open to criticism on this issue. What, it might be asked, should replace those opinions?

Truly independent opinion would be a good start.

Magisterial reporting would be better.

The latter is seriously problematic. I have adverted to the difficulty of ascertaining, on any particular occasion, exactly what has happened. However, those difficulties are insuperable if what is admissible as “fact” or “what has happened” is too tightly constrained. There is also the question of talent. Commonly we “know” what we have to find out, before we find it out. Fortune favours the prepared mind.

How, with the newspaper editor, do we identify the people with “prepared minds”, the people to whom we should assign the task of “finding” what happened?

There is no one way. However, we can be sure that anyone appearing on the Government’s “business heavyweights” list will not be a good choice.

The better choice would be a person like Knut Wickell, who spent two months in jail in 1910 for querying the Immaculate Conception. Knut, in the context of controlling a bank, had the added merit of being an economist, one spurned for most of his life because he lacked a legal qualification.

More merit.