There are no flies on Dermot Ahern

Dáil Sketch: The plight of the undocumented was dramatically illustrated in the Dáil yesterday when Fine Gael's Bernard Allen stood up brandishing a newspaper article with the headline: "My Fight for Irish Illegals."

The article wasn't about Bernard's fight for Irish illegals, which was exactly the point. His and Fine Gael's contribution had been written out of the story by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, whose heroics the report described. Worse than ignored, the Opposition's campaign for US-based emigrants had been rubbished" and subjected to bile", "nastiness", even hatred".

Mr Allen was joined in his attack by party colleague Dinny McGinley, who said the Minister was a "Johnny Come Lately" on the illegals issue.

But Mr McGinley also implied that unlike the illegals themselves, the Opposition's campaign was not without documentation. "We went out to the US] last year at our own expense," he snarled at the Minister: "We still have the receipts!"

Dermot Ahern seemed genuinely surprised that the FG men were so upset about him taking the credit for something. "I'm a political animal," he explained, checking himself for flies and finding none: "I'm not going hide my light under a bushel."

"Well don't bury anybody else's light," snapped Mr Allen, mixing his biblical parables in the excitement.

And still he couldn't let the newspaper article go, physically or psychologically. He even compared the Minister with War of Independence veteran Dan Breen. "My Fight for Irish Freedom", he sneered, citing the title of Breen's bushel-free autobiography.

"I didn't realise you were so sensitive, but I'm glad you're reading our propaganda," replied Mr Ahern.

When Michael D Higgins congratulated him on his choice of word, the Minister deftly changed the subject, quipping that he had been watching "your propaganda" the Labour conference - all weekend: "And I noticed your leader didn't mention Northern Ireland once."

The leader in question, Pat Rabbitte - a political animal more ways than one - didn't mention it on Leaders' Questions either, opting instead to quiz the Taoiseach on a weekend speech in which he said "we should be nicer to the banks".

Mr Rabbitte was at a loss to know how we could be any nicer to them, given that the profits they extracted from their Irish customers were already three times the European norm.

Bertie Ahern protested that if the Labour leader hadn't been so busy at the weekend, he would have seen that the speech had more "balance" than that.

Not as big a balance as the banks themselves, obviously. But enough to earn thunderous applause" from FG's finance spokesman Richard Bruton, who had been in the audience, said a smiling Taoiseach.