LESSON one for aspiring politicians: blood is thicker than water. A previous government forgot that and fell to its doom over payments to haemophiliacs.
Skilled political performer that he is, Michael Noonan does not need to be reminded that blood is a serious issue. Isn't every Limerick person reared with the story of Patrick Sarsfield, the blood draining from his body, saying: "Would that this were for Ireland."
But Nimble Noonan missed his footing at one stage during "the question and answer session in the Dail yesterday. He couldn't resist taking a "cut" at the lawyers for the late Mrs Brigid McCole, but the only person he wounded was himself.
We have had many martyrs in our history who, conveniently enough, suffered death at the hands of a foreign power. When we got our own State, this was all supposed to stop. A great many people see the late Mrs McCole as a victim of independent Ireland. By all accounts, she was a truly heroic person who fought to her last breath to establish the truth about the terrible things done to herself and others.
Therefore when Mr Noonan was a king her lawyers he should have been conscious of the danger that his remarks might be construed as a criticism of Mrs McCole herself.
Nimble Noonan cantered into the minefield, started laying about him with claymore and broadsword when disaster struck. The women from Positive Action got up and walked out of the public gallery.
Mr Noonan's feelings at this point are known only to himself. He must have experienced that, terrible hollowness at the pit of the stomach that hitherto successful politicians feel when they see ruination staring them in the face.
By the end of the debate he had retrieved the situation some what. He acceded to the demand from the Positive Action group for a public apology. Otherwise, they were demanding his head and, in the wave of revulsion over Noonan's remarks, who knows whether his Cabinet colleagues would have stood by him?
Since only 2 1/2 hours were allocated, it was unwise for the Minister to come along with a 20 page, single space prepared, script. Reading it at breakneck speed, he was clearly uncomfortable, not the self assured performer we know of old.
Maire Geoghegan Quinn did not have a prepared script and spoke slowly and evenly as she put some of the questions that have arisen from this ghastly affair. However, she did not succeed in inflicting anything like the damage that Noonan caused to himself.
The debate degenerated into party political name calling. Noonan was stoutly defended by his fellow countyman Michael Finucane, provoking a gibe from Bobby Molloy that he was "the Limerick sub".
Even this massive scandal was reduced to Politics as Usual. If our political system is consumed with a burning commitment to get to the bottom of this business, that feeling did not come across in yesterday's debate.