The Taoiseach was said to be recovering from a root treatment yesterday, but dentistry was the least of his problems. The grassroots treatment of the Hanly report was continuing to give him a pain in the face. Frank McNally reports.
And as usual, he had to sit through Dáil question time without an anaesthetic.
Enda Kenny was first up with the drill. "Open wide, this will hurt a bit," his demeanour said, in a triumph of optimism over experience.
In terms of forcing information out of the Taoiseach, the Fine Gael leader always threatens an extraction, but Mr Ahern invariably gets away with a bit of filling instead. Even so, Mr Kenny tried again, suggesting that in view of the Taoiseach's stated intention to quit politics in 10 years, an unimplemented Hanly report might live on after him.
Mr Ahern disagreed, but welcomed the opportunity to clear up what he called the misrepresentation of Government policy on the document.
Unfortunately, the dental work was taking its toll, and he had even more trouble than usual making himself understood. "I can't hear you," shouted Bernard Allen. And in case the Taoiseach thought this was just gratuitous abuse, the Cork Fine Gaeler added: "I honestly can't hear you."
Anticipating the opposition's hearing problems, the Government had earlier sent out a strong visual signal when Michael Smith sat beside Mr Ahern for Taoiseach's Questions.
But the gesture impressed nobody. The Greens' Trevor Sargent mocked the Taoiseach's claim that Mr Smith "totally, totally" supported Hanly, comparing the double adverb to double yellow lines ("meaningless until you start clamping") and suggesting the Minister for Defence was still parking illegally.
Mr Smith had avoided the clampers by writing a letter of apology to the Taoiseach. But after his facial contortions in the Dáil last week, he sat through the opposition taunts yesterday like a man who'd had Botox injections.
Perhaps he had forewarning of last night's parliamentary party meeting, at which the Taoiseach is said to have taken a "firm line" on internal discipline.
Among the visitors to Leinster House were parliamentary representatives from Cyprus. They were in the gallery to hear Pat Rabbitte lambaste the Government for the "savage 16" cuts to the social welfare estimate. As alliteration goes, this is not quite as memorable as the "dirty dozen", so the Labour leader concentrated his fire on contrasting the penny-pinching in social welfare with the generosity of Charlie "the Horse Whisperer" McCreevy to the equine industry.
Fifty-eight million in social welfare cuts, snarled Mr Rabbitte, compared with a €67 million handout to racing, "mostly prize-money for the diversion of tax exiles". And after all the probing around the Taoiseach's wisdom teeth, it was clear that Mr Rabbitte had finally hit a nerve.
Mr Ahern snapped back that he would not take lectures from a party that had implemented "paltry" social welfare increases when in power.
The Cypriots looked on impassively. But they must have been puzzled by the politics of another small, divided European island, where there appears to be little prospect of peace between the minority horse-owning community and a downtrodden majority.