It smells fishy, doesn't it? No, not the lobsters Ian Og tried to drag up with Seymour Sweeney, the man he 'knew of' in, ahm, when was it he was out in his boat, 2004 he thinks it might have been.
No, it's the general impression that a lot of people have been, as Tory minister Alan Clark put it, 'economical with the actualité'. Bit by bit, drip by drip, each little extra piece of information emerges so as to convince the public there's a lot more lurking behind what is already known.
More remarkable perhaps is what you sense is an embarrassed silence from senior figures in the other parties in the executive.
The charge has been led by Sinn Féin's Daithi McKay, the youngest MLA. Fair enough you might think: he's the MLA for the Causeway coast. Fair enough if it was an issue confined to the development of the North Antrim area but it isn't. There are wider issues of planning and allegations of cronyism and of that good old Irish political tradition, clientilism.
The latest revelation, that Ian Paisley snr claimed to the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2003 that Unesco backed Mr Sweeney's bid to develop a visitors' centre when Unesco couldn't have backed him since they don't deal with individuals, merits more than a complaint from Daithi McKay. If even Paisley's assertion in his letter signed by Ian Og had been true, what did he think was doing anyway advocating Sweeney's plan in 2003 when the NIO had just that year presented Unesco with plans for the Causeway's development by government, the National Trust and two local councils? Who exactly is the local MP loyal to, eh?
Yet, in the midst of all this, silence from the deputy first minister and all other Sinn Féin ministers. Silence too from Mark Durkan.
Is it not extraordinary that almost all the revelations of the connections between the Paisleys and Seymour Sweeney have emerged as a result of media investigation, not questions in the assembly? Why are the other parties satisfied with Arlene Foster's meaningless phrase, a 'minded decision'? Sounds grand, means nothing.
You either have a planning decision or you don't – and we don't. Why does no-one ask her what is the legal status of her phrase? There ain't one.
Arlene Foster is prancing around on her high horse threatening all and sundry with writs even though no-one has accused her of anything. Would it not be smarter to accept that she knew nothing about the links between Mr Sweeney and her party but rather that she has been exposed as a naive and inexperienced minister, duped and now hung out to dry? She's not exactly getting rock-solid support from other DUP ministers.
On the evidence of the past couple of months the parties here are failing the public who elected them to administer the north. It's not only the Causeway controversy that reveals the assembly's weakness.
It's clear the executive is very fragile. No decision on a victims' commissioner, on a stadium location, on the replacement for the 11-plus, on local government reform, on anything of importance in fact. Unionist nonsense about the Irish language and shamateur dramatics in Belfast parades simply shows the real issues are being avoided.
What is glaringly obvious is that neither the assembly nor the executive can face the sort of row any democratic forum requires. The consequence is that we have no way of calling any minister to account. Compare the Republic where the taoiseach has just spent three gruelling days at the Mahon tribunal which has exposed the wrongdoing of several ministers and sent two TDs to jail. Isn't it amazing that no party has called for the resignation of either Paisley or even tabled a no confidence motion in either of them?
Alan Clark's remark about the actualité was under pressure at the Scott inquiry into arms for Iraq. At the very least there needs to be a public inquiry into the Causeway controversy.
One outcome would be to exonerate the poor fall-girl Arlene.
The trouble is that the political structures at Stormont are so weak, not only can ministers not be called to account, they can't even vindicate themselves, so the fishy smell lingers.
