DÁIL SKETCH:AT LEAST Trevor Sargent looked happy. Many thought they might never live to see it, but yesterday, the EU announced parity of esteem for misshapen vegetables.
Through the darkest days, the Minister for Allotments never gave up, even when daft restrictions from Europe drove knobbly potatoes and bifurcated carrots underground.
Today, Sargent is vindicated and all over the country, farmers markets can now openly sell the oddly-shaped tubers that have made schoolgirls and schoolboys giggle ever since the first farmer drove a spade into soil.
A great day for Trevor. Oh yes, he was entitled to smile.
Speaking of misshapen vegetables, they were at it hot and heavy in the house during Leader's Questions. Brian Cowen was in foul humour, roaring at the Opposition like a dyspeptic bullfrog for daring to do what they are supposed to do, which is oppose.
He really doesn't seem to have got the hang of this Taoiseach thing yet. It isn't enough anymore just to have a row, nor it is enough to grumpily swat away Opposition arguments by complaining they never have a good word to say about the Government.
Impatiently dismissing them because he knows better doesn't go down well either. That only goads his tormentors into baiting him even more.
Yet again yesterday, the Taoiseach attacked his opponents for their lack of achievement when they were in charge. "There are now hundreds and thousands more medical cards than when ye were in office," he thundered at Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore.
It's a meaningless line of attack, but one which Cowen favours time and again. Somebody should take him aside and remind him that the other crowd haven't had a sniff of power for 11 years.
The subject for discussion was difficult. As with the recent furore over medical cards for pensioners, the decision not to proceed with cervical cancer vaccinations for 12- and 13-year-old schoolgirls is proving highly emotive.
The move is set to save the cash- strapped exchequer about €10 million. When they return to their constituencies at the weekend, FF backbenchers will have worried parents demanding to know why their Government has compromised their children's future health for such a relatively paltry sum of money.
Back in the Dáil, Cowen is compromised by the bottom line. Budgets have to be cut. Savings must be made. He dismissed the concerns of Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore as "populist" politics and "emotional blackmail".
"I'm fed up listening to that type of argument from you," he barked at the Fine Gael leader. The way Cowen sees it, every budgetary cut he makes is routinely attacked by the Opposition because they want to score political points.
He's having none of it.
His backbenchers though will be hearing a few populist arguments at the weekend from the mothers and fathers of teenage girls.
They'll find out all about emotional blackmail, not to mention ballot-box blackmail.
