It was supposed to be the day that openness and transparency became architectural features of Leinster House, but instead we had a return to Civil War politics.
Light, albeit murky October light, poured into the atrium of the £25 million extension as TDs returned from the summer recess to occupy their new offices, only to find work was still going on. The culture of architectural transparency extended to exposed wiring, unpapered walls and a situation summed up later in Ivan Yates's impassioned words: "Maurice Manning's office has no floorboards!"
It was more Bleak House than Leinster House, as far as the Opposition was concerned. Phones and fax machines didn't work, files were still in crates, computers would not compute. A statue of Cornucopia and Vulcan, representing the themes of "industry and plenty", was in place at the entrance to the new block; and although there was industry, and plenty of it, among the workers trying to finish the building, it wasn't enough to assuage the phoneless TDs.
Not since the early 1920s has the theme of unfinished business provoked such passion. Fine Gael leader John Bruton invoked that decade when he compared the communications facilities then - "when you had maybe one phone to a whole parliamentary party" - with the situation yesterday.
He couldn't understand why the junior Minister overseeing the project, Martin Cullen, was still in office. "Does he have an office?" sniped a voice behind him.
In response, Bertie Ahern cleverly played the labour card, prefacing a qualified apology for the state of the building by thanking the workers involved for their huge and continuing effort. This sent Labour's Emmet Stagg, the most aggressive of the anti-Government forces, briefly into retreat. But forced to echo the Taoiseach's praise, he attacked again on the theme of "bad management".
The Tricolour was flying at half-mast over Leinster House, and it was a surprise somebody didn't accuse the Government of failing to hoist it fully in time for the return of the Dail. In fact, the House was mourning no fewer than three past members: longtime independent Joe Sheridan, former minister John Boland and Tipperary South TD, Theresa Ahearn.
The warm tributes paid to them all served to calm the atmosphere somewhat. But it was only a temporary ceasefire on a bad-tempered day: the day when (almost) all the phones were taken out of Irish politics.
