Amid the giddy excitement of mass audience and its intoxicating glow, we have witnessed starry-eyed politicians stagger without direction — or in the words of one — “round and round the house, and mind the dresser”.

Last Wednesday TDs Mattie McGrath and Peter Fitzpatrick leapt onto the stage of mass public attention, before immediately tumbling off and into a pile of legal and constitutional question marks.

This episode — ‘The One Where the Committee Lost its Mind’ — was a show where insinuation and supposition were decreed through a lens of sneer and hector, and where terms of reference were abandoned for jibes and insults.

“Ah sure that’s just Mattie”, or “don’t mind Peter, he’s gas” is winked and nudged with abandon from the audience, as the crowd bays for more humiliation before the execution.

Of course, the powerful must be taken to task and called to account, and yes, pointed questions about flip flops, free cars, around-the-world trips, exclusive membership in swanky West London clubs, rugby and concert tickets, and rotten arrangements with greedy celebrities, are essential.

But a committee must adhere to its own terms of reference — indeed, Rule 32 in its Witness Protocols manual states: "Witnesses can expect to be treated fairly and with respect."

Could you call the behaviour of Mattie McGrath fair, or the shenanigans from Peter Fitzpatrick respectful?

Mr McGrath — who began by reading from a script — should certainly know better, being the victim of appalling mob abuse for the way he speaks and presents his arguments at these hearings.

His written text was soon abandoned amid a ramble (or was it a rant?) about ‘fiduciary responsibility and duty’’, aimed at nobody in particular, which required the first of a number of interventions by chairwoman Niamh Smyth, to ask to which witness the inquiry was aimed.

“Any board member who feels like it,” was the sullen and emotional snap.

McGrath then delivered a bombshell, calling for a criminal investigation into the matter and asked: “Would you, as board members, or as a chief financial officer, welcome a criminal inquiry and would you have any objection to such an inquiry?

"If the minister [Catherine Martin] gets the courage to send in the fraud squad [Garda National Economic Crime Bureau], will you co-operate and will you welcome that?” 

The chairwoman once again intervened and asked the ‘who’ question, which was ignored by the TD: “I want to know will you co-operate with a Garda inquiry, nothing else.” 

Acting director-general Adrian Lynch responded that “if any fraud was committed then of course” RTÉ would co-operate, a response which was immediately guffawed through a clear insinuation that indeed a serious crime had been committed.

“If any fraud…” scoffed Mr McGrath, obliterating the ‘terms’ manual, and abusing that once-sacred cow of Oireachtas privilege.

He then took to mocking, calling for a circular table at the next hearing, to allow the witnesses to “pass the paper around because I’m getting no answers, no answers” — he had just received an answer.

“Round and round the house and mind the dresser, do you understand that? An old proverb in country parlance,” he declared, before swerving back into the same question about a criminal probe, forgetting that RTÉ said it would welcome a Garda inquiry if one were needed.

Moya Doherty said that RTÉ’s legal advice was that no fraud had been committed — although this is likely to be tested further.

The Tipperary TD was having none of it: “Sorry, sorry, that’s your legal advice. You could get legal advice from different people, it’s not legal.” 

Chairwoman Smyth frantically intervened to order Mr McGrath not to make accusations, but by then it was too late, the committee member had already assumed guilt and convicted the condemned, in this most unjust of non-justice systems.

Some time later it was the turn of fellow Independent TD Peter Fitzpatrick, who immediately fluffed the lines he had all week to prepare: “Do you honestly think that people out there are stupid and this wasn’t going to happen?” 

He then showed himself to be a traditionalist, where the man’s place is at work and a woman’s is in the supermarket, as he poured scorn on CFO Richard Collins’ earlier shopping analogy to describe business conducted through barter accounts.

The accountant, like the RTÉ director of commercial Geraldine O’Leary, has borne the brunt of questions over almost 12 hours of hearings, so far, and both are showing signs of strain — while others have been convalescing and absent.

Mr Fitzpatrick jabbed: “My wife doesn’t go to three shops in one day, does your wife go to three shops in one day?” 

The representative was clearly unaware that Mr Collins’ wife Lynda, and mother of the couple’s three children, died in dreadful circumstances in 2011 when she was struck by a falling tree on Waterloo Rd, which killed her almost instantly.

Some background research would have prevented such calamity, for what must have been a terrible discomfort to Mr Collins, as the tone became personalised.

Before Tuesday’s hearings, the committee would do well to remember Michael McDonnell, the former group CEO of CIE, who died by suicide weeks before he was due to appear before an Oireachtas committee in 2001.

And how the Supreme Court ruled that Angela Kerins was dealt with by PAC in a manner that “very significantly” went beyond its terms of reference, and had possibly engaged in an unlawful and unfair process.

Certainly, the current process and where it has gone is grossly unfair, and whether it is unlawful too, time will tell.