You knew relations with Sinn Féin were strained when the Taoiseach turned up for leaders' questions wearing an orange tie.
Maybe he was just adopting the message of a well-known phone network that, despite appearances, the future was bright.
But his manner suggested otherwise, and it was the past that seemed to be preoccupying him.
When Enda Kenny suggested that Sinn Féin may have known for two years of plans for the "fund-raising spectacular" at the Northern Bank, while negotiating with a foolishly trustful Government, it brought an angry demand for "evidence" from Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin.
But the Taoiseach appeared to agree that republicans had taken advantage of his better nature. "That was then," he conceded, looking back in sadness rather than anger, "and this is now."
Mr Ó Caoláin's question about evidence was met by another question from Willie O'Dea (the man the Government says is the political leader of Óglaigh na hÉireann, a claim republicans dispute). "Where's Ó Snodaigh this morning?" sneered the Minister: a reference to the SF TD whose posters, according to evidence at the trial of five alleged IRA men, were found sharing the boot of a car with a stun gun and a CS gas canister. "Canvassing equipment," chirped Dinny McGinley, as Ó Caoláin just frowned.
For the second week running, it looked like the Monaghan TD was in for the parliamentary equivalent of a punishment beating. But at least this time the Opposition parties did not all gang up on him.
Pat Rabbitte devoted his question-time slot to another massive hold-up - of motorists at Dublin's West-Link toll bridge. And there was further relief for Sinn Féin when Joe Higgins, back from an overseas trip and with a suntan brighter than Bertie's tie, turned the attack on the Taoiseach over the jailing of Ray Burke.
In a richly-layered agricultural metaphor drawn from his Kerry childhood, the socialist TD lectured Ahern about pigs and their eating habits.
Ahern may have kept his own face out of the "speculators' trough" in the 1980s, but he knew which snouts were in there, and where the swill was coming from etc. And when he reappointed Burke in 1997, he deliberately chose to keep his head "in the fragrant trees of north Dublin", rather than follow the bad smell.
Ahern smiled thinly, but Higgins's colourful language had clearly provoked more painful memories of things past. At any rate, he was suddenly conscious of the ironies in the situation. Chiding Higgins for not sharing his past certainties about Burke with the authorities, he nodded towards the SF benches: "I know that Deputy Ó Caoláin, if I was saying what Joe Higgins has been saying, would ask me, where was the evidence."