DAIL SKETCH/Frank McNally: The Minister for Finance was "a very honest man", said Labour's Joan Burton. Fine Gael agreed. If there was one criticism you could never level at Charlie McCreevy, suggested Richard Bruton, it was reluctance to take responsibility for his decisions.
Mr McCreevy listened to the compliments from the joint committee on finance and the public service with a puzzled look, perhaps wondering if this had something to do with April 1st. Either that or the Opposition spokespeople were taking a cue from Mark Antony's speech at the funeral of Julius Caesar. Brutus was an honourable man, too.
The compliments were apparently genuine, however, albeit with a motive. In the eyes of the Opposition, the Minister had come to bury the 1997 Freedom of Information Act, not to praise it. But, even so, they hoped he might accept a few amendments to his revised legislation.
Referring to the new ban on releasing the advice memos of official committees, Mr Bruton regretted that someone as forthright as Mr McCreevy could stand over a measure designed "to stiffen the spine of weak-kneed ministers". This was a medically-confused metaphor, but we knew what Mr Bruton meant. And, in a similar spirit, Ms Burton suggested that, in view of his "general willingness to be forthcoming and shoot from the hip", the Minister might think again about the whole exercise.
But all the shots fired by Mr McCreevy yesterday were to shoot down Opposition amendments. He reacted to Labour's proposal of a 12-month "pause for thought" like Gen Tommy Franks reacting to suggestions of a pause in the advance on Baghdad.
There would be no pause and "no going back", said Mr McCreevy.
Victory was certain, he could have added, given the parliamentary numbers.
That you have to be up early with this Government has long been suspected. But there was more evidence of this at the committee when Ms Burton complained that the group of high-level civil servants asked to review the 1997 Act had done most of its work at "two breakfast meetings" last year.
Breakfasts could hardly last much longer than an hour-and-a-half, she suggested, although the continental version could be had in 15 minutes, standing up. Either way, these "orange juice meetings", as she also called them, summed up the high-handed approach which had produced the freshly-squeezed FoI Bill.
Mr McCreevy took these and other criticisms like a man who enjoys a grill, morning or evening. But for a Government with a big majority, every day begins with a power breakfast. So when Sinn Féin's Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin suggested this was a time "for the Minister to be magnanimous", we knew for sure that it was April 1st.