THE following is the text of a statement issued by the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, yesterday:
Mr BERTIE Ahern backed off debating with me in Cork, yet he had plenty of say in Letterkenny the day before yesterday, and plenty of space to say it, when he supplied a copy of his "pre-nuptial agreement" with the PDs to The Irish Times.
As a great fan of the satirical flights of fancy of Kevin Myers, I thought for a moment that his efforts had been transferred to the front page. But for future guidance of The Irish Times, let me point out that the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines philosophical as "being skilled in, or devoted to, philosophy or learning".
But on closer inspection, Aristotle has nothing to fear. The speech turned out to be nothing more than Fianna Fail rules for letting the PDs pretend to be in Government.
What has such an exalted definition to do with the drab, dreary and draconian pre-nuptial agreement which Bertie Ahern presented to the PDs and pawned off as "philosophical"?
Far from philosophy, the Letterkenny speech reads more like the marriage agreement dictated by Charlo in Roddy Doyle's drama. Mary Harney is cast in the role of the woman who walks into doors. In her case it will be the closed door of Fianna Fail policy, according to Mr Ahern.
Let me spell out what Bertie Ahern was doing when he made that speech.
Basically, like any would-be bully, he was telling Mary Harney what the house rules would be from the time she gets up early in the morning to the time she goes to bed. He announced patronisingly that bigger parties in a coalition should only bring on board the "relatively non-controversial and obviously beneficial proposals of the smaller party
In other words what Mr Ahern has in mind is that his party, and his alone, will decide what is "non-controversial" and what is "beneficial", and accept only those ideas from their partners. Combine that with the PDs' non- negotiable tax demands, and you have a recipe for grudge and grievance - not government by consensus.
This is typical of Bertie Ahern's political passive/aggressive style. He sets out aspirations for the relationships to be observed by other parties but the only acceptable position is for Fianna Fail to make all the decisions, just as they did when they excluded Mary Harney from the collapsed Northern peace talks in 1992.