Expect plenty of fireworks when the Dáil resumes today but the big issues still count, writes Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent
A Dáil term starting with a bit of classic verbal slithering and obfuscation from the Taoiseach is just what the Opposition would have wished for.
Last Friday, listeners above the age of 10 would have understood the Taoiseach to say that Michael Collins's tax dodging was news to him. Yesterday those 10-year-olds would have understood him to say that he has known about it for months.
Why he couldn't tell us last Friday what he told us yesterday is a mystery. However, the Opposition will have great fun with all this when they get to challenge the Taoiseach in the Dáil chamber this afternoon for the first time in three months.
Pat Rabbitte loves this sort of thing. So, indeed, does Joe Higgins, but he will be otherwise detained during the ritual taunting of Bertie. Enda Kenny, fresh from the peak of Kilimanjaro, returns to the Dáil chamber with another mountain to climb and will weigh in with enthusiasm and outrage.
None of it will matter much. When the Government parties and the Taoiseach were sailing along at high opinion poll levels, the serial offending of their heroes, current Ministers and backbenchers (Burke, Haughey, Lawlor, Cooper-Flynn, Foley) made no difference to their standing. Now they are struck low in the polls, the tax dodging of a backbencher that few have heard of outside Limerick - and the Taoiseach's confusion on the matter - will hardly make a difference one way or another. The Tánaiste made it clear yesterday that it didn't really matter to her either.
We will have a couple of days of Bertie-baiting on this one and then move on.
Several other small-picture issues will generate some short-term political excitement. Don't expect G.V. Wright's drink-driving and running down of a pedestrian to be dwelt on for too long. A number of sitting Oireachtas members on both sides of the House have drink-driving convictions, although they were fortunate enough not to run pedestrians down on the way home. There won't be too much moral indignation on that one.
Tomorrow there will be "statements" on the child-abuse commission. This setpiece affair, in which deputies read out prepared scripts in the Dáil chamber, is sometimes mistakenly called a "debate". However the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, intends to take a question and answer session afterwards, exposing himself to Opposition criticism of the handling of the affair which led to the resignation of Ms Justice Laffoy.
The sting has been taken out of this one in advance. The extraordinary delay in the commission's work was caused primarily by the Government's determination to ensure the commission would investigate only "sample" cases of abuse.
Last week, however, with the commission having lost its chairwoman and its investigative work shelved until next spring at least, Mr Dempsey told the victims that "sampling" was off the agenda. The victims sound happier, the pressure is off the Minister and the bungling to be condemned this week appears historical rather than contemporary.
Fine Gael, meanwhile, will use their first Private Member's time of the autumn session to debate a motion calling for the withholding of benchmarking payments to public servants, pending public-service reform. Encouraged by the opinion poll result in this newspaper showing the public almost evenly divided on the matter, party front-bench members will speak tonight and tomorrow night on the need for reform before pay rises.
The main Opposition party is relieved by what is at least a pause in their poll slide. It will take time before they know whether the trend has been reversed. They enter the new Dáil term with three themes they will be basing their public pronouncements on: leadership, responsibility and value for money.
These lofty concepts will be deployed regularly to condemn the Government for not showing leadership (the Taoiseach's response to hearing of Michael Collins's "issues" with the Revenue Commissioners some time ago); for not taking responsibility (delays in Luas, road and rail plans, and the crisis in the Laffoy Commission) and for not getting value for money (Luas, road and rail plans, and benchmarking). At least they have a plan.
(Just a quick reminder of that mountain Enda Kenny and his party have to climb. Since the May 2002 general election, the main Government party, Fianna Fáil, has lost 12 percentage points in electoral support. Fine Gael, the main Opposition party, has not gained even one percentage point.)
Labour is happier, on a gentle but steady upward gradient in the polls, content to condemn the Government without yet having to put forward a coherent alternative vision.
With three years or more to go to the next general election, the Opposition seem to figure that vision can wait.
The Green Party and Sinn Féin will continue to seek to maximise their impact in the Dáil, knowing that for them, getting candidates elected in next year's local elections is crucial to their longer-term prospects for growth in the Dáil. Independents - those that use the Dáil - will seek to highlight their pet issues, and receive local coverage for having done so.
It is the Government that must try to make the running and try to convince that they are not, as they appear to be, lurching from crisis to crisis but implementing a coherent vision. Michael McDowell's major Garda reform Bill will come before Christmas, as will legislation designed to curb insurance costs (they seem to have been talking about that one for a long time now). Bills to ensure that public infrastructure projects don't have to take a generation to be completed are due in the spring. Nothing will change fast.
But things will change. Not before the local elections which, barring an unforeseen political transformation, will deliver Fianna Fáil a severe hammering.
But some time after that the Luas will be built, the main routes to and from Dublin will see new stretches of motorway completed, Iarnród Éireann will get substantial new rolling stock and journey times will be shortened, the global economic recovery may take root and boost Exchequer revenues here, and the Special Savings Investment Accounts will be available to be cashed in.
All of this is coming before the next general election. And who knows but there might be a deal in the North, a successful EU Presidency, and even reform of the health service and the Garda Síochána.
Little of this may happen. But the possibilities illustrate that in politics nothing is inevitable, and a Government is rarely terminally damaged. The Opposition can't just expect the Government to lose the next election. They have to show they can win it too.