Dail Sketch/Frank McNally: The subject of regulatory reform is like a heavyweight boxing champion who has had too many fights. It's big, and it's important, but it's hard to understand.
And yet the issue always creates a frisson whenever it comes up for discussion in the Dáil.
So it was yesterday. Opposition leaders could barely restrain themselves as the Taoiseach reminded them again of the White Paper's "six core principles of better regulation".
His announcement that "regulatory impact analysis" (RIA) had been introduced in all Government departments last June only added to the excitement.
Compared with previous summaries of what regulatory reform actually involves, Mr Ahern's latest explanation was disappointingly concise.
A pithy two pages of the Dáil transcript, it was expressed in the sort of plain, unadorned management-speak ("my department has lead responsibility for supporting and progressing implementation of the better regulation agenda") that any fool could follow.
But it is a tradition of the House now for the Opposition to react to the Taoiseach's dissertations on the subject like Manuel in Fawlty Towers reacts to English.
This time, the honour of expressing incomprehension fell to Enda Kenny. "I'm not sure what that lengthy reply means," he said, before overcoming the handicap to propose his own reform, viz: that the plethora of independent regulators now overseeing everything from taxis to health insurance should be amalgamated into a "single, really powerful" body.
The Taoiseach demurred from the idea of a "super-regulator", suggesting - even though he was now off-script - that "the extent of the potential synergies may be overstated".
Pat Rabbitte dug up a newspaper headline from 2001 in which the Tánaiste vowed "Government to abolish curbs on pubs and pharmacies within a year." He asked the Taoiseach if Ms Harney had made "any progress on that".
Despite the subject's complexity, levity is never far away from this debate. There was a major outbreak of it when the Taoiseach cautioned: "I don't want to be here in a couple of years' time addressing the problem of overly powerful super-regulators."
Whereupon Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin quipped: "We don't want you to be here either."
Smiling again, Mr Ahern challenged the Sinn Féin man to replace him and, when the challenge was accepted, delivered his own quip: "You wouldn't be big into regulators."
In fairness, this was only stating the obvious. Sinn Féin is a political party and has nothing to do with the RIA: either the provisional RIA (as piloted by a departmental steering group), or the official RIA, as rolled out in June.
If there's a continuity RIA, needless to say, Sinn Féin has nothing to do with that either.
Meanwhile, despite his misgivings about splits in the regulatory movement, Enda Kenny stopped short of demanding RIA decommissioning.
Which is just as well, because making such a process transparent would be a challenge. Two independent clergymen would not be enough: we'd definitely need photographs.