The outcry that followed the Oireachtas golf dinner was prompted by many things, but orbited one central idea: that the politicians and others who attended flouted the rules which everyone else had to observe. That there was one rule for them, and another for everyone else.

Now it seems that there is one rule for politicians and another for judges.

Ms Justice Denham’s report certainly does not exonerate Mr Justice Woulfe.

It's impossible to read the report without wondering why judge didn’t notice another dinner in the adjacent room, didn’t see the table plan for both rooms, didn’t see the partition between the rooms was opened after dinner and that the prize-giving involved people from both rooms

But she accepts his bona fides and applies the principle of proportionality: would the punishment of resignation fit the crime of attendance? In the detached and calmer atmosphere afforded both by her status and the passage of time since the controversy, her judgment is: no.

Slap on the wrist for the judge, but no question of walking the plank.

The politicians play a more brutal game. Some of them have the scars to show it.

Full analysis here https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/denham-report-judgments-of-politics-are-harsher-than-the-law-1.4369712