With the Dail back in full swing, third-time lucky Taoiseach Bertie Ahern found a slot in his schedule to help his property developer friends when he turned out yet again for businessmen Aidan Crowe and Gerry Houlihan, owners of the Clontarf Castle hotel.

At a bash on Tuesday night to celebrate the hotel's €10 million revamp, Bertie played to an eager northside crowd who laughed heartily whenever he referred to ways in which Clontarf Castle had raised the money to fund its new hotels: among them a Crowne Plaza in Dublin - which Bertie opened a few years ago and another in Dundalk.

Following on from a speech by Houlihan - owner of DID Electrical and the Long House pub in Dublin - about the Dundalk hotel being the tallest building between Dublin and Belfast, Ahern quipped that, sure, it was unusual to have tall buildings in Dundalk and that lesser projects might have been referred to the Mahon tribunal. The remark brought the house down.