DAIL SKETCH / Kathy Sheridan: Sitting above a clammy debating chamber always triggers the same old questions. Do these lads have the remotest notion of why they're there? What do they think they're for? Do they think at all?
Now you might think you read somewhere vaguely official that the Government had made a major contribution to the inflation rate, i.e. 40 per cent or so. Indeed, you might be thinking that some explanation must be imminent from some apologetic government type.
Well, when Pat Rabbitte mentioned the 40 per cent, the Government man he christened "Comical Willie" (O'Dea) dealt with it succinctly. It was a lie, he yelled. A noun he amended - under Ceann Comhairle pressure - to "a terminological inexactitude". In fact, he added at full volume, the situation was exactly the opposite . . . .in Limerick, maybe.
At least Comical Willie is concise. Anyone turning to Bertie Bass for a hint of contrition and the ghost of a plan will be ground down by sheer verbiage. "At budget time it was estimated that indirect tax changes would add about 0.85 per cent to the inflation rate but the estimate did not take account of subsequent administrative charges".
Umm. No. Still don't get it. Still, it sounds like some numerically challenged creature cocked up. So, Bertie, how about, say, a sorry? Strewth. He practically blamed the Opposition for demanding what he grandly called "the indirect tax changes and increased administrative charges" before giving himself a big pat on the back: "It is our management of the economy that is allowing us to continue to grow, to generate jobs and to keep unemployment at a low rate - that's the success of it".
Meanwhile, two major health reports were being handed out everywhere but into the hands of Opposition elected representatives as the Government lads sat grinning gormlessly.
When Joe Higgins demanded an explanation for the Government's line on the Iraq invasion, following Donald Rumsfeld's admission that there might be no weapons of mass destruction after all, it's only fair to say that Bertie responded. But he ignored the question. "Tell the truth for once," shouted Michael D. Higgins. Far from explaining what Joe Higgins called "a palpable falsehood", Bertie repeatedly mentioned the 14,000 victims killed in one village by Saddam.
"We are not going to apologise for any small role we might have played in helping to remove a dictator that has made his people suffer for 20 years."
So stuff your angst about US troops, Shannon and phantom pretexts for war. It woz us wot won it.