Dáil Sketch / Frank McNally: There are a lot of bugs going around this time of year. So when James Breen staged a stand-up protest during Leaders' Questions yesterday you didn't have to be a doctor to know what ailed him.
The Clare Independent was highlighting alleged inaction over the MRSA bug. But this was clearly another case of the DDSE (Dáil Deputies Seeking Ejection) virus, which had struck a number of TDs in the Cork area earlier this week.
In fairness to Mr Breen, he has himself been a victim of MRSA. Indeed, as he said during one of his out-of-order contributions: "I nearly lost my life." But the alacrity with which he left when ordered out by the Ceann Comhairle appeared to confirm the alternative diagnosis.
Yesterday promised to be one of those increasingly rare occasions in public life when the word "fulsome" could be an accurate description of proceedings.
Frequently mistaken for a de-luxe version of "full", the adjective seemed sure to qualify in its proper sense when the House finally got around to paying tribute to Liam Lawlor. Convention and the presence of the Lawlor family meant that the former Dublin West TD could not be condemned in death. But he could not be sincerely eulogised either, we all thought.
In the event, the tributes were neither full nor fulsome. TDs walked a tightrope between the two f-words and nobody quite fell off. The balancing act was made somewhat easier by the now notorious press coverage of the Moscow crash, so that deputies who had the good taste not to attack Mr Lawlor could legitimately stage a diversion by attacking the media instead.
Bertie Ahern called him "controversial, but a good guy and a nice person", and nobody batted an eyelid. Few would disagree with the first and third parts of the tribute. But if it had been a triple combination at the Hickstead Truth Derby, Mr Ahern might have had the middle pole down.
Enda Kenny stressed the family man and sports fan aspects of Mr Lawlor, neither of which had ever featured at the tribunals. In a roundabout compliment, Brian Lenihan suggested that, in another life, he might have made a great lawyer. And Trevor Sargent maybe put it best when he praised the late TD's busyness as a public representative. "He was always doing something," said the Green Party leader, walking on a particularly narrow part of the tightrope and somehow staying on.
The subject of so-called "on-the-run" paramilitaries came up at Question Time when Pat Rabbitte quizzed the Taoiseach about the contrasting approaches of the two governments.
Meanwhile, the Dáil's on-the-runs - the Cork TDs ousted on Tuesday - quietly gave themselves up. Under a compromise, the rebels were granted a debate last night on cancer care services. In return, they offered the Ceann Comhairle apologies, which may or may not have been fulsome.