Knowing wood from the trees can be vital

It was "time to distinguish the wood from the trees", the Taoiseach said, and nobody would dispute that arboreal confusion was the theme of the day. After all, John Bruton had already compared Mr Ahern to "a small boy caught robbing an orchard", an allegation probably inspired by the Taoiseach's claim that in investigating Ray Burke he had been "up every tree in North Dublin".

Already, too, Pat Rabbitte had felt it necessary to place on the record of the House that there were trees in North Dublin. And John Bruton's constituency colleague, John Farrelly, would later heckle the Government with shouts of "the crows are coming home to roost", an example of the confusion that arises when you can't distinguish your trees from your chicken houses.

It was a metaphorical bonus that the Taoiseach's most ardent supporter during the debate was Michael Woods. The Minister for the Marine was the first heckler of the evening, interrupting John Bruton's speech to remind him of his leader's heroic role in the peace process.

And the Opposition wasn't, as it were, out of the woods yet. When John Gormley (of the tree-loving Greens) suggested Fianna Fail was "in the top five" of the world's most corrupt parties, Michael Woods was outraged. Leaping to his feet, he demanded - vainly - that Gormley "withdraw his scandalous remarks".

Whatever about robbing orchards, Bertie Ahern started his speech by robbing the Opposition's Bill on changing tribunals' terms of reference. In doing so, he stole much of the Opposition's thunder, too. The benches opposite creaked with laughter when he admitted Ray Burke had been "embarrassingly good at political fund-raising"; but when he finished, it was to the warm applause from the relieved Government ranks.

The most spirited reply for the Opposition came from Pat Rabbitte, among other things comparing the Taoiseach's account of Dermot Ahern's investigations into Ray Burke with the latter's more minimalist version on RTE. "Why did Dermot Ahern acquiesce in the Steve Silvermint role until, subjected to ridicule in the house last Thursday, he decided to drop his leader in it?" the DL man asked.

Across the floor, the cool, clean anti-hero of the Burke investigation was unmoved by the affront. Neither did Mary Harney blink when Rabbitte spoke of the investigation being no more than a PR exercise to "mollify the malleable PDs".

The PD leader caused a slight frisson when she left the chamber temporarily, immediately after the Taoiseach finished speaking. "Will she be back?" asked the Opposition, gleefully. But she would, and was, to tell the House that when the history of Ireland in the 1990s came to be written, "the names of Haughey, Lowry and Burke may be linked together as some form of unholy trinity".

Brian Cowen rose at 8 p.m. to complain of political axes being ground by the Opposition. But by then the axes of the Opposition and the chain-saws of the Government had cut down all the trees, including those the Taoiseach had been up. And if there was any blood on the floor after an anticlimactic evening, there was plenty of sawdust to absorb it.