FROM the Dail chamber there are many exits. They were well used yesterday as abstentionism, boycotting and other potent forms of particularly Irish protest swept the House.
It was a day that saw exceptional walk outs, one unexpected adjournment and a fusillade of taunts from Mary O'Rourke in the direction of a wide eyed Gay Mitchell - "Oh, waffle, waffle, waffle, oh waffle, waffle... You are a wafler of the deepest dye, Mr Mini Europe".
He gathered his own ammunition and hit back with the appellation, "Old Mother Reilly", a comical star of the early cinema talkies.
The Opposition tried to prise answers from the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, over the Attorney General's role in the Judge Lynch delisting debacle but their toil was futile.
So Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats reached for the old weapon and left the Government in awful isolation.
They joined forces in the morning to quit the chamber when, as expected, the Cromien inquiry into the controversial delisting was "scheduled" for debate, and more than 60 questions tabled to the Minister for Justice and the Taoiseach were effectively ruled out of order.
Driven to the end of his tether by his unruly charges in Fianna Fail later in the day, during Taoiseach's Questions, the Ceann Comhairle, Sean Treacy, announced that he had no option but to adjourn proceedings. He marched from his podium, monitors went blank and the Dail adjourned pro tem.
If people think that debate means lively discourse, it would be a corruption of the term to apply it to the Dail. Questions normally elicit much more intelligence, and when Mr Bruton cried out on the Order of Business that their admissibility was not decided by the Government, but by the Ceann Comhairle, the two Opposition parties cried "foul".
Mary Harney declared that unless questions about the role of the Attorney General and the DPP were answered, her party was not prepared to take part in a "charade". The Taoiseach, in his reasonable voice, appealed for moderation; the best and most responsible way of dealing with this matter was to hear the Minister, "allow her to be heard" and ask Mrs Owen questions today.
Brian Cowen was in like a flash "on a point of order". Given the admission by the authors of the report that there were "unanswered questions", questions that could not be answered based on the information available to them, would the Taoiseach accept there could be a Dail committee to investigate the affair? Again?
In the end, after much tooing and froing, and knowing they would not get their questions answered yesterday, Bertie and Mary led their troops from the chamber.