Some years ago, when Charles Haughey was in some difficulty facing into an ardfheis, the word swept the parliamentary party that he was proposing to lower the age for access to contraception.

Allowing teenagers to purchase condoms provoked a furious debate in the corridors of Leinster House and inevitably extended to the RDS. By the time the diversion was over, our hero had glided through another weekend.

Facing into Kilkenny for his most fractious parliamentary assembly since being assumed into the office previously held by his mentor, Mr Haughey, Bertie Ahern did not want his disgruntled backbenchers to be allowed to concentrate on past mistakes. Better to look to the future.

What more uplifting question to preoccupy the minds of Bertie's followers than the composition of the next government?

Never mind all that stuff about mistakes of the past, sure didn't I ask Martin Mansergh to do an audit (I was an accountant, you know) of backbenchers' views and I have studied the findings very carefully and the Cabinet will take Martin's report into account when putting the budget together for Charlie. McCreevy that is.

No, we won't be allowing him to go off on a solo run this time. By the way, he's sorry he can't be here. He's in Europe dealing with inflation.

And then it was down to the formation of the next government which, of course, is one year and nine months away.

Young bucks, hot in their leather over inflation and the O'Flaherty affair, could envisage themselves getting promotion if Bertie pulled it off.

Old Woodsy can be seen dozing on the monitor beside Bertie in the Dail chamber. Joe Walsh is fortunate to have made it this time.

Mother O'Rourke is also on her lap of honour. As the traffic congestion worsens and Dublin Airport is in a mess and 400,000 disaffected Eircom shareholders are after her blood, surely she will be gone.

Although he would have us believe that it is a long time away, and although Bertie would prefer the PDs, his main pitch was to Ruairi Quinn and Labour.

Imagine a brittle domestic scene where the partners have just come through a rough patch. He announces at breakfast that he has started building a new house and although it won't be finished for one year and nine months he wants to tell her now that he is already looking for a new partner because she can't give him what he wants any more.

Only Bertie could publicly announce that his Government has 21 months to run but that neither the PDs nor Sinn Fein is likely to be sufficient to put him back in power, so it's time to start making eyes at Ruairi Quinn.

Will Mary Harney be able to live with this? Does she have any alternative?

Quinn has contained his excitement well. He knows what media types say behind his back and sometimes in print. One of the enduring myths of modern politics is the one about how close Ruairi and Bertie are supposed to be.

There is no evidence of any such closeness between two political contemporaries who spent 20 months in cabinet together but 20 years opposing each other.

Ruairi also knows what his own troops are saying about the prospect of an FFLabour alliance, and the latest MRBI poll in this newspaper confirmed the rejection of any rapprochement with Fianna Fail by a majority of two to one.

Quinn is one of the most experienced politicians in Leinster House. He has single-mindedly devoted his career to professional politics. He wanted to be leader of the Labour Party, a prize he thought had eluded him. He will not react precipitately to other parties' imperatives that Labour must show its hand now.

Quinn knows that the same correspondents who, for example, would criticise him entertaining the Fianna Fail proposition will in the main be the same correspondents who will eviscerate him after the general election if he fails to do his "national duty" even if that means going into government with Fianna Fail. Once the deed is done they will then revert to disbelief that he could have done such a thing.

Quinn has been down this road before. It is a peculiar given of Irish politics that no matter which fork in the road Labour takes, trouble beckons. It is most unlikely that the media will permit the Labour Party to fight an election campaign without clearly indicating in advance which fork it will take. However, before battle is joined, Labour and Quinn would be foolish to show their hand.

The redoubtable Jim Mitchell has not gone away. From his hospital bed he conveyed his disappointment with the £90 million retrieved from AIB in the great DIRT affair.

Both Pat Rabbitte and Bernard Durkan were more circumspect. They had no basis, Rabbitte thought, for second-guessing the Revenue audit, but when the public hearings resume on November 30th the figures will be examined.

Yet Mitchell is more in tune with the public pulse because a feeling lingers that the settlement should have been higher. Nonetheless £153 million recouped so far for the taxpayer is not bad. And the implications of the Revenue Commissioners having botched the DIRT issue for a second time seems a bit unlikely.

Once again the Dail reconvened to a sombre note when the first business was to pay tribute to departed colleagues Joe Sheridan, John Boland and Theresa Ahearn. It is only months since Drapier wrote about the sincere and moving tribute paid by Theresa Ahearn to the memory of her constituency colleague, Labour deputy Michael Ferris.

It puts in perspective colleagues' complaints about the premature move to new offices even if the complaints were mainly provoked by Martin Cullen's brass-necked denials of the evidence of his own eyes.