Dail Sketch/Miriam Lord: Bertie has no time for the newspapers. The Taoiseach is up there with playwrights and actors: the views of the critics are best left ignored.
He once informed the Dáil that he never listens to newspapers. Presumably, he never reads the radio either.
However, it seems his lack of interest in what passes for commentary extends only to Ireland. The foreign media are a different matter entirely. When Bertie says he takes Le Figaro of a morning, he doesn't mean a biscuit made by Jacobs. Bild may be what most of his supporters do for a living, but to Europhile Bertie, it's also a German broadsheet.
He quoted a recent editorial from a Dutch newspaper to a mightily impressed chamber yesterday. In fact, deputies were so impressed, they could scarcely contain the laughter.
This insight into Bertie's newspaper habits was casually dropped in the course of a rather confusing defence of the Government's discredited e-voting machines. Now that the House has returned to normal after the Bertiegate ructions, it was back to exploiting the usual embarrassments.
For Labour leader Pat Rabbitte, this meant another easy tilt at the e-voting shambles. In doing so, Pat was shamelessly playing to the gallery; in yesterday's case, the Distinguished Visitors' Gallery, where a delegation from the Scottish Parliament were taking refuge from the rain during Leaders' Questions.
The old jokes are the best, and as Pat happily romped through the comic possibilities presented by the voting machines - acquired for €52 million, couldn't be used because they are unreliable, now in storage at a cost of €1 million a year, violated by Dutch computer hackers - the Scottish MSPs looked highly entertained.
Is it true that Minister for the Environment Dick Roche intends to press ahead with using these e-voting machines? And does he really intend to store them in some central location, "guarded by the Army," wondered Pat. "I would have thought this was not necessary, because they're useless." The parliamentarians from Scotland twinkled.
The fact that representatives of our near neighbours were in the audience wasn't lost on Bertie, who told the House he would not let Mr Rabbitte away with all the glory in front of the visitors. The machine hardware is fine, there is merely a minor glitch with the software, he argued, dazzling the MSPs with a trademark rendition of civil service gobbledegook.
He backed up his array of statistics with "Dutch media editorials which were handed to me this morning." Nothing wrong with the machines.
"If they're as good as the Taoiseach says, why are we not using them in the election?" riposted Pat. It's like saying the chassis of a car is perfect but the engine isn't working.
"Sounds like the Labour Party car to me," chortled Martin Cullen, who should know better.
Would that be the same Martin Cullen who declared that these out-of-service machines represent "the most secure electronic system that exists in the world"? Bertie continued to defend the robust quality of his e-voting system, baffling the visiting MSPs with this gem explaining the software deficit: "The reason there's not, is the democratic system and the vote of the people using their franchise needs agreement." Then he quoted the Dutch editorial, which did not advocate a return to paper and red pencils.
Our "old silly system" is outdated and we must move forward, insisted the Taoiseach. "Otherwise, we'll go into the 21st century in this country being the laughing stock with our stupid aul' pencils." And a voice from the far regions of the Opposition benches piped up wearily: "We ARE in the 21st century."