Dail Sketch/Frank McNally: It's barely 18 months since Enda Kenny promised to "electrify" Fine Gael and, as you'd expect with such an epic public works project, much remains to be done.
But the temporary extinction yesterday of one of the party's brighter lights - John Deasy - provided a test of progress made to date. The results were mixed.
It started promisingly, with the Kennyites filling two rows of the Opposition benches, buzzing like ESB pylons for what threatened to be a major showdown with the Ceann Comhairle. As expected, the calling of a vote on Mr Deasy's suspension (for being disorderly last week) was the signal for co-ordinated uproar. Mayo TD Michael "Electric" Ring led the charge, complaining that Fine Gael had had enough of the "dictators" opposite, and the unfairness of House procedures.
But just as their output approached full wattage, the Ceann Comhairle hit the trip switch - or the division bell, to be exact - and the initiative sputtered out miserably. The electronic vote on Mr Deasy's expulsion was easily carried. In protest, his colleagues were reduced to demanding an electricity-free "walk-through" vote, which only confirmed the first result. Mr Deasy is formally out of order, but is expected to rejoin the grid on Friday.
More walk-throughs were called on the Order of Business, with the Opposition protesting the appearance of the guillotine in only the second full week of Dáil business. And their apparent lack of confidence in the whole electrification process saw Fine Gael mount a Luddite attack on Martin Cullen's plans for electronic voting in the local and European elections, without a "verifiable paper audit trail".
The lack of a paper trail in the Department of Justice dominated Taoiseach's Questions. The mysteriously missing files on the Dublin-Monaghan bombings were the subject of repeated inquiries, with Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin suggesting that the disappearance of such documents in a tribunal would be a "scandal". At this, the Taoiseach could not resist a sardonic aside. There was never any danger of his own tribunal files going missing, he said, "because everything I give them seems to end up in the papers". Maybe Mr Ahern needs a verifiable paper audit trail too.
The most dramatic moment of the day came during questions to the Minister for the Environment, when Joe Higgins brandished a half-pound of sausages at Mr Cullen. This was not to highlight the Opposition's belief that the Minister was stringing out his answers (although he was repeatedly accused of "waffling"). It was merely Exhibit A in the Socialist TD's case that packaging was the real culprit in the State's waste crisis, and not the public, as suggested by the TV rat ads.
Fine Gael's Bernard Allen agreed that the €1.5 million campaign was "putting everybody on a guilt-trip". And sure enough, with Mr Higgins's sausages, Mr Cullen's waffles, and Fine Gael's Electric Ring to cook them on, we could have had a late breakfast in the Dáil yesterday. But the rats were putting us off our appetite.