The Whiddy Island oil terminal disaster almost 36 years ago still ranks as one of Ireland’s worst marine tragedies.

In the last 30 years we’ve had a plethora of tribunals, commissions, investigations and reports, so many in fact it is hard to understand why we do not live in a perfect society.

The Leveson probe in the UK shows a determined chairman can make an enormous difference to an inquiry, writes Dan Buckley