Slimline Ray's replies lead his pursuers on the cross-country rough terrain route

There was a choice of seafood dishes on the Leinster House menu yesterday. The restaurant was offering grilled salmon, while over in the Dail Chamber the day's special was grilled Ray.

But Opposition TDs looking forward to tucking in must have been dismayed at the sight of the main course. Judging by his appearance, Ray Burke had spent much of his summer in the sauna, perhaps in training for the hothouse atmosphere he expected to encounter when the Dail resumed. And when he rose shortly before 3 p.m., he had the look of a man determined that nobody would grow fat on his misfortune.

It can't have harmed him that the ghost of Michael Lowry turned up at the banquet. Even before the Minister for Foreign Affairs opened his defence, the former Fine Gael minister was on his feet to apologise yet again if he had misled the Dail. "I have contributed to my own misfortune and I have admitted my mistakes, and I have paid and continue to pay a high price," said Mr Lowry, comments which seasoned Dail observers interpreted to mean: "I'll never resign my seat. Do you hear me? Never!"

Mr Lowry spoke wistfully about the "wisdom of hindsight" and when it was his turn to speak, the newly slimline Minister for Foreign Affairs was helping himself to some too. "With the benefit of hindsight", Mr Burke concluded, after rehearsing the details of the contribution made to him in 1989, accepting the money had been perhaps a mistake, leaving him open to the sort of questions he was answering today.

Then he sat down and braced himself for the scheduled question and answer session, which he pointed out was "unprecedented in this House". But whatever about the questions being unprecedented, the answers soon began to sound very familiar. Taking a leaf from Mr Lowry's performance in Dublin Castle during the summer, Mr Burke took the cross-country route with many of his replies, tiring his pursuers over the rough terrain.

As he told us repeatedly, he was worried about creating "appalling precedents" for his fellow TDs, were any of them to have to undergo a similar experience. And he was particularly appalled as he found himself creating the precedent of telling us about the £35,000 overdraft he negotiated from his bank in 1989, for "house refurbishment, the building of tennis courts for my daughter and changing my wife's car". Did that, he asked, (meaning the overdraft) sound like somebody "awash with cash"?

The Opposition parties took their turns with questioning and some came back for seconds. But none of the usual sharpshooters, not even the Springs or the Rabbittes, seemed able to pick off the target. Maybe it was the premature end to the holidays, but hearts just didn't seem to be in it.

Perhaps sensing the lack of passion from the other side, Mr Burke finished the allotted hour with an emotional tirade about a newspaper story from 1986, which had maligned his late father. Choking tears, his hands shaking as he drank water, he called the allegation a "complete and utter lie" and then he was finished.

Until that, the most telling contribution of the day had been John Bruton's objection when two mobile phones rang in quick succession in the Dail gallery. "No respect," complained the former Taoiseach, while Mr Spring muttered mischievously that it was "time to take the mobile phone out of Irish politics".

The session had opened with statements on the deaths of Mother Teresa and the Princess of Wales. Speaking of the latter, the Taoiseach quoted Patrick Kavanagh, saying she had joined the group of people of whom the poet said: "Count them the beautiful unbroken".

Maybe he was thinking of his Minister for Foreign Affairs, too. Mr Burke left Leinster House later in the evening, looking not exactly beautiful perhaps, but for the moment at least, unbroken.