Dail sketch: The Protocol on Explosive Remnants was up for mention in the Dáil yesterday. Wartime stuff, apparently. The Taoiseach's time-bomb may not yet be in a fully dismantled state, which explains why Fianna Fáilers were tip-toeing gingerly around the House.
A week after the detonation of Bertie's Drumcondra dig-out, and a day after he blew up emotionally on the six o'clock news, it was, perhaps, a little too early to think about tidying up the fallout. Opposition leaders are convinced a few more unexploded bombs are still out there.
So they behaved like men navigating a minefield when they arrived to tackle the Taoiseach on his admission that he accepted two payments totalling €50,000 from his friends, supposedly in the form of a loan, although Bertie never returned the money.
His explanations for this lapse in judgment - he was minister for finance at the time - were convoluted and rather odd.
As a story, it was a three-hankie tearjerker. Taken in one go, it was very good. But taken apart, it was somewhat more difficult to swallow.
Great things were expected of Enda and Pat on their first day back after their long break from the exhausting business of legislating. Bertie trudged into the Dáil like a man expecting a right roasting. The chamber was packed. The gallery crammed.
With any luck, there might be a few more explosive remnants going off.
After a few minutes of Leaders' Questions, it was like the boys had never been away.
(This would explain why Ceann Comhairle Rory O'Hanlon forgot the three-month recess by teatime. In exasperation, he informed the Opposition that deputies couldn't keep coming in "day after day" and disrupting the rules of the House.
"We haven't been in here for 12 weeks!" exploded Labour's Brendan Howlin.
Enda had his silencer on. Serious and stern, he addressed Bertie like a disappointed father lecturing his son for getting a young wan into trouble. "It's a simple issue of right and wrong," he quivered across at the Taoiseach, who sat with his head bowed in contrition.
"Stand up and admit that what you did was wrong . . . Yes, I was WRONG!" He could have come in with the thumbscrews and a box of Daniel O'Donnell albums, and he still wouldn't have wrung that confession out of Bertie.
Labour leader Pat Rabbitte, as befits his role as the robust side of the FG/Lab partnership, upped the volume slightly and lowered the tone a little.
But like his new best friend, Enda, he was uncomfortable going anywhere near the subject of the Taoiseach's marriage break-up. The fact that Bertie talked about it with such toe-curling frankness the night before on television had no effect on Pat's sensibilities.
So he decided to get stuck into the Taoiseach's carefully cultivated "man of the people" image. "A bit less of the common man routine," harummphed Pat. "You've been driven around this country since 1987. You've never put your hand in your pocket at a forecourt to fill the car with petrol. You're earning over a quarter of a million per annum. So there's no point in comparing yourself to the man on Hill 16 who got into a bit of trouble and had a whip-around . . . Mr Haughey's collection started with a whip-around as well."
Bertie refused to get riled. Throughout, he spoke in level tones, his eyes lowered in the now familiar Diana routine.
When he got around to the nitty-gritty of how he arranged his finances in 1993, Bertie whispered and mumbled and it was impossible to hear him properly.
Pat was agog at the news that the minister for finance had no bank account for six years between 1987 and 1993. How did he cope? The Taoiseach explained that he couldn't use the joint account he had with his wife, given that they were separating at the time. He used "cheques". The Labour leader didn't dig deeper, unwilling to go anywhere near the marital situation. However, some of us wondered what Bertie meant by "cheques". Were they the special sort of ones you can get without owning a bank account?
Were they a few blank ones left over from his days signing them for Charlie Haughey? Or was he talking about his £70,000 pay cheques?
More questions. Did he cash these cheques in the bank and then stick the money under the mattress? Did he cash them in one of his benefactor's pubs, walking around for the rest of the month with the bulk of the 70 grand shrinking in his pockets as he paid his bills? Certainly, it solves the mystery of those baggy suits with the saggy pockets he was so famous for wearing at the time.
We're on to something here. This could be the answer for the voluminous anoraks, the ones that earned him the nickname "Nanook of the Northside". The man was a mobile bank.
A large family could have been fed and watered for a year on the contents of his jacket.
We shouldn't be making fun. Not after Joe Higgins, who decided Bertie's position was so outrageous it was risible.
He tore the Taoiseach apart with a series of polished one-liners, so sharp that even the po-faced Fianna Fáilers couldn't resist the poke in the ribs.
Joe didn't see how it would have been such a problem for the Taoiseach to return the money to his friends. In fact, he drafted the kind of letter Bertie might have written to them.
"Ah jaysus lads, you'll have me in huge trouble if you don't take back the 50 grand. My circumstances have improved and I will have 50 reporters traipsing after me for the rest of my life if this comes out. Bertie. PS. Tell Paddy the plasterer to stay clear of Callely's house. He is in enough trouble with the painter already."
He then moved on to the glum and silent Michael McDowell, sitting next to the Taoiseach on his first day in the house as Tánaiste. "He's sitting meekly beside the Taoiseach today, admittedly with the demeanour of a tombstone, but without the moonlight," he sneered. It was as if Tánaiste McDowell was a political novice, "a political newborn dropped by the stork into a basket outside Leinster House two months ago."
The newly defanged McDowell managed a gummy smile. Bertie, when his turn came to reply, sniffed he didn't think Joe was very funny.
Meanwhile, the PDs had a meeting, and issued an amusing statement after it in which Tánaiste McDowell blamed the businessmen for their altruism as much as he blamed Bertie for his "honest error of judgment".
Docile McDowell is in charge today. Bertie is off to Ballyjamesduff, home of Paddy Reilly, but no relation to either of the two Paddy Reillys who participated in his whip-around.
