Both the Taoiseach and the Tanaiste put their names to the introduction of their Government's revised policy programme. Yet a date could not be found in the diary of either Mr Ahern or Ms Harney to get them together for the publication of the document.
It would be difficult to see either party leader missing out on the publication later this month of the National Development Plan. And therein lies the underlying message that has to be attached to the revised programme, which is marked by its stark lack of detail in any area of Government policy.
At the end of July the two parties published a mid-term progress report on the implementation of their 1997 Action Programme for the Millennium. That document gave the FF-PD coalition full marks for each of its policy objectives. It was a little like students marking their own exam papers.
Yesterday the two parties set out the questions they would like to be asked in their next test, which will arrive with the next general election in June 2002 at the latest. What is clearly apparent from the 53 pages in the revised programme for government are the constraints placed on the Fianna Fail and PD negotiating teams ahead of the publication of the forthcoming National Development Plan, the December Budget and the next partnership agreement.
In many policy areas it is a case of waiting to see what the final details will be when they are worked out at a later stage. As the PD Minister of State, Mr Robert Molloy, said yesterday in relation to the proposals to tackle the taxi problem in Dublin: "Wait until you see what the final details are . . ."
And it is this wait-and-see approach which permeates the entire document. So with this somewhat dubious exercise in public relations, the Government is content to leave its host of goodies for another day.
What the revised programme does is set out various targets for the remainder of the Government's life. These include the achievement of full employment; a reduction in the income tax burden on the average tax payer; continuing the social partnership process; reducing crime; improving the quality of life in rural Ireland and implementing the Belfast Agreement.
The document describes these as "very ambitious objectives". Yet they are in effect everything this Government has preached since the first day it took office back in 1997. And the reality is that neither the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, nor his counterpart in the Labour Party, Mr Ruairi Quinn, would be unhappy to put their names to large elements of the revised programme.
Indeed, therein lies the problem facing all the major parties in Leinster House, which at present are running with highly transferable policy agendas. This revised programme should not be considered in isolation from last week's poor turnout in the Dublin South Central by-election. There is nothing in the latest document to suggest that either Fianna Fail or the Progressive Democrats would be confident to break away from the party political pack in Dail Eireann that clamours for the policy centre-ground.
In one of the few departures from the Government's 1997 document, Fianna Fail and the PDs have adopted a new commitment to get the unemployment rate "well below" 5 per cent and "to effectively eliminate long-term unemployment by 2002". But have we not already got an economy which is facing severe shortages of labour in many sectors? So nothing too radical there.
The review document would also appear to take some of the steam out of any commitment to change the electoral system. The PDs favour altering the current multi-seat proportional representation system as does the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey.
However, such suggestions have generated opposition within Fianna Fail and outright hostility from Fine Gael and the Labour Party. So this aspiration to change the current system is likely to remain just that.
The coalition partners say they are working "extremely well" but despite this, their third joint policy document in two-and-a-half years of Government, the PDs are still uneasy about going into the next general election with a request to the electorate to return to office their arrangement with Fianna Fail.
Again yesterday PD Minister of State Ms Liz O'Donnell said they would go into the next election as an independent party. This unwillingness may be explained by a fear over the fallout from the ongoing controversies.
Indeed, another commitment in the revised policy document is very much influenced by the recent revelations at the Moriarty tribunal over the use of the State-funded party leaders' allowance by Mr Charles Haughey when he was Taoiseach. These funds will in future be subject to an external audit with limits placed on the uses to which the money can be put.