We don’t do corruption in this country. We do law.

We do law. We do fantastic protections for citizens accused of corruption. We do faux outrage about graft and bribes, and what have you. But we don’t do corruption.

Take a few recent examples. In June of last year, former councillor, Fred Forsey Jr, was convicted of receiving a bribe of €80,000 for his vote. He received the money to vote, and to encourage others to vote, for a rezoning near Dungarvan, Co Waterford, that would enrich the landowner, millionaire developer, Michael Ryan.

Forsey was sentenced to six years in prison, with two suspended, for what Judge Gerard Griffin described as an offence at the “upper- to mid-range” of the corruption scale.

The judge said he was taking into account Forsey’s “attempt to cover his tracks” by backdating a loan agreement. This ‘loan’ was deemed by the jury to be a bribe.

A year later, it emerged that no corruption could have taken place, when a jury found that the developer, Ryan, was not guilty of corruption.

Ryan is innocent.

So how could Forsey have been corrupted? How could he be guilty of corruption if he received money from an innocent man?

It takes two to tango through a bribe, and, in this case, one of them didn’t get up to dance.

Another rare example of corruption being the focus of a criminal trial occurred in 2003. Former Dublin city and county assistant manager, George Redmond, was prosecuted for accepting a bribe of £10,000.

A motor trader, Brendan Fassnidge, needed a right-of-way across an insignificant patch of council land, but, he said, roadblocks were in his way. He told the court that he paid Redmond £10,000 to smooth things out.

Redmond, according to the Mahon Tribunal, was corrupt through the course of his long and storied career in the public service.

In 1999, he was arrested in Dublin Airport, in possession of £300,000, which he had withdrawn from an Isle of Man bank.

The jury in the criminal case convicted Redmond, and he served a year in prison. Then, his conviction was set aside by the Court of Criminal Appeal. According to the law, he was innocent, entitled to the presumption that he had not been involved in corruption. Once again, no corruption took place.

The Planning Tribunal was set up in 1997, on foot of allegations of corruption concerning Ray Burke, then a leading light in Fianna Fáil. Three times, over the previous 25 years, the gardaí had investigated Burke and found that he had not been corrupt.

The tribunal ruled differently, but, in the eyes of the law, Burke has done nothing criminal. He is innocent.

Since his resignation from the Dáil, in 1997, Burke has been on a pension that is, today, worth approximately €100,000 per annum. Last Wednesday, the trial of a businessman and four politicians, on corruption charges, collapsed. In the eyes of the law, all are innocent.

The case centred on allegations by Frank Dunlop that he acted as a conduit for bribery. He claimed to have received £25,000 from businessman, Jim Kennedy, in 1991, with a view to bribing councillors for their votes.

Kennedy had an interest in a bank of land in Carrigmines, south county Dublin, which he wanted rezoned, so its value could shoot up exponentially.

According to Dunlop, he scattered bribes like one might crusts of bread to starving ducks. He claimed to have paid off Tony Fox, Colm McGrath, Don Lydon and Liam Cosgrave — all of whom were defendants in the case. He also says that he bribed Sean Gilbride, who had been charged, but died before the matter came to trial. Three other deceased men, Jack Larkin, Cyril Gallagher and Tom Hand, were also on Dunlop’s list of corrupt councillors in relation to this matter.

In 2009, Dunlop pleaded guilty to sample charges concerning this corruption, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. An officer from the Criminal Assets Bureau said the only evidence against Dunlop was that to which he had confessed.

Yet, as of last Wednesday, the law has decreed that those who were charged with giving and receiving bribes are innocent. Ergo, no corruption took place. To what did Dunlop plead guilty? Was he on mind-altering drugs?

Did he invent the corruption and go to prison to get at former business or political associates? Is it all just, as Don Lyndon once described allegations about bribery in Dublin city council, “a bit of crack that got out of hand”?

All of the councillors, and ex-councillors, in the case were named in the Planning Tribunal report as having received either “improper” or “corrupt” payments in relation to other rezonings. But all are innocent in the eyes of the law.

As far as the law is concerned, we don’t do corruption in this country.

Nobody is engaged in corruption to the extent that they are criminally liable for their actions. Some societies might look at this state of affairs and decree that the law needs to be adjusted, tightened, revised, to ensure that, at the very least, it acts as a deterrent.

Not in this country. Here, in the absence of a criminal justice system that deals with corruption, we set up a tribunal. This ensures a narrative illustrating how some individuals strayed from the fold of probity, by offering or accepting money for favours, contrary to the common good.

All such individuals, no doubt, find the ensuing publicity uncomfortable, but they can, nevertheless, go about their business, secure in the knowledge that they are innocent in the eyes of the law, and, really, that’s all one can ask for.

Tribunals are expensive and cumbersome, but maybe that’s the price to be paid in a society that is incapable of making proper provision for corruption in its criminal-law code. The Planning Tribunal alone could cost upwards of half a billion euro — money that would be much better spent alleviating distress or suffering among the vulnerable and afflicted.

The only alternative is to brush the notion of corruption under the carpet, and pretend it doesn’t exist, which, of course, it doesn’t, as far as the law is concerned. And for corruption, read also most facets of white collar crime, and, of course, perjury.

Don’t get me started on how we don’t do perjury in this country, unless you’re a petrified teenager from a sink estate, for whom different rules apply.

To a mature, developed society, dealing with such matters as we deal with them here might appear to be ludicrous, feudal even, harking back to a time when the law was a tool used by the upper echelons to keep the lower reaches in line. But that’s the way it is in this country.

We have our own way of doing these things, and we most certainly don’t do corruption.