Dáil Sketch/Marie O'Halloran:It took until the afternoon before the first direct "off with his head" demand was issued. Opposition outrage, never slow in appearing, simmered through the morning until mid-afternoon when Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey stood to take transport questions.
The revelation that the Minister had not been informed that Aer Lingus was considering moving its Shannon-Heathrow operations to Belfast until six weeks after it first emerged was unbelievable and incredible to the Opposition.
In the argy-bargy and heckling during the morning's order of business the Government benches were well filled, and there was enough energy to confront the Opposition's outrage and dilute it.
However, by the time the Minister stood to answer transport questions he cut a lonely figure, the only TD on the government benches. There was a question about Aer Lingus and on his own the Minister faced the first demand, from Labour's Tommy Broughan, to resign.
Tommy had seen the briefing document the Minister got on June 14th, his first day in the job and the day after the first Shannon rumblings. Tommy was stunned that the document never mentioned "the elephant in the room". Either the Minister should resign or his predecessor should resign or "you're in charge of a totally dysfunctional department in which case you should still resign".
But the man in his fourth department as Minister coolly replied: "usually it takes deputy Broughan a little longer to call for the resignation of the Minister he is shadowing, but he does it regularly". By the time the "special notice" questions come up, the support had arrived. Up to 10 Fianna Fáil deputies and chief whip Tom Kitt sat in behind the Minister - not one of them a Shannon region TD. Even the Greens' Trevor Sargent and John Gormley arrived.
Later, Fine Gael's Fergus O'Dowd could not believe that for "44 long days you sat in your department and nobody came in and told you". Mr Dempsey was supposed to be the "mighty Minister" but was in fact "mighty mouse".
"Was there a question there?" the Minister responded.
Accusing the Minister of incompetence, the Fine Gael man demanded "tell the truth". "That's exactly what I do - tell the truth - sometimes at great inconvenience to myself," Noel replied.
Earlier in the day Labour's Jan O'Sullivan, a Shannon region TD, was first out of the traps to demand a debate. She was quickly followed by Fine Gael's Kieran O'Donnell, who had regularly asked the Minister when he knew about the Heathrow slots. He finally got an answer and he too was repeatedly told by the Minister that the department knew in June, but he did not. "Human error," the Minister said.
At the end of all the rows and debates, Labour's Ruairi Quinn said "not credible", which prompted the first real sign of anger from the Minister.
"If you want to call me a liar, Ruairi, you should come out and be man enough to do it," he said.
And that was that - at least for the moment.