Dáil Sketch / Frank McNally: Like Dublin commuters on a Friday evening, the Government just could not get off the M50 yesterday. The issue dominated Leaders' Questions for a second day, despite Enda Kenny's attempt to reopen debate on the Leas Cross nursing home.
Bertie Ahern might have welcomed a diversion - even towards the health service. But the Leas Cross exit was quickly closed by Pat Rabbitte who, before you could say "bollards!", directed the Taoiseach back to where he was on Tuesday.
Then, according to the Labour leader, Mr Ahern had distanced himself from Martin Cullen's reported plans for a series of electronic tolls along the M50.
Ground conditions during Leaders' Questions are always treacherous, however. And - again according to Mr Rabbitte - the Taoiseach had not left a safe distance between himself and the Minister, with disastrous results.
A review of the Dáil's official record for Tuesday showed Mr Ahern saying that the National Roads Authority "will invite tenders for the design, building and operation of a multi-point, free-flow, barrier-free toll regime on the M50". This was "civil service English", Mr Rabbitte conceded, as opposed to the language Mr Ahern had actually spoken. But what else could it mean, except what the Taoiseach and Minister were now denying?
Mr Ahern said it meant that the NRA held "a lot of views" on road management, but it was for the Government to make decisions. It had not made this one yet, he repeated. When the Opposition questioned his claim that yet more traffic studies were needed, he pointed out that the very foundations of the M50 were built on underestimates of future needs. Ireland had a million people more now than when the motorway was conceived, he said. (The question of whether it was the road planning or family planning that went wrong was not pursued.)
The Taoiseach was still trapped on the M50 when he was stopped by a Sargent - Trevor - and accused of going the wrong way. Specifically, Green Party leader Trevor Sargent claimed, he was leading Ireland "completely the wrong way" in not reducing dependence on cars, roads and fossil fuels.
Sargent Trevor had been up late watching President Bush's State of the Union address, which included an admission of the USA's fuel addiction. Consequently, he didn't even have to ask Bertie to "blow into this": he knew from looking at him what the problem was. "You are an oil addict," Sargent Trevor told a startled Taoiseach, whose only admitted weakness until now was for a pint of Bass.
Having seen a good news story - the scrapping of the West Link toll plaza - turn into another PR embarrassment involving electronic equipment, the Minister for Transport had a chance to correct the record on the M50 when he faced questions in the afternoon. But he stuck to a general defence of road-tolling, which he said was used by "every modern economy" in the world.
Public/private partnerships were a great success in delivering infrastructure quickly and efficiently, and tolling was part of the price. Ask not for whom the NRA tolls, was Mr Cullen's message: it tolls for thee.