It had been a good debate, Mary Harney said, with a "great deal of unanimity". She wasn't wrong. The Dail wasn't quite unanimous on the issue, but it decided by a large majority to be absent from most of yesterday's exchanges on the terms of the new tribunal.

The Government and Fine Gael went through the motions, and few among the smaller parties matched the day-long enthusiasm of Joe Higgins and John Gormley. The Green party TD and the Socialist seemed to occupy opposite ends of an invisible trench, along which Mr Gormley occasionally scurried with whispered communications; a red Green conspiracy which harried the Government through the debate.

When it came to dealing with the amendments, the Government sent Charlie McCreevy to the wicket. As one of the best-known dissidents of the Haughey era, Mr McCreevy carries more authority than many of the Fianna Fail front bench and he used it to great effect yesterday, dispatching most of the Opposition's suggestions smartly to the boundary. He accepted a few as well but he reserved his most masterly performance for the end, when the Opposition pushed again for Ray Burke's inclusion in the terms.

It is a problem with Mr McCreevy that many of his verbal flourishes get lost somewhere in his soft palate, so that following his delivery betimes is like trying to count sheep in a fog. But there were no such difficulties when he began his defence of Mr Burke for whom, he pointed out with a quick flash of his old "Club of 22" membership card, he had no special brief.

"Let's call a spade a spade," he began. Deputy Burke "has done what no other deputy in Leinster House has done" and pursuing him further at this point was a "time-wasting exercise". Then, working himself up to utter scorn, he pointed across the floor and said he knew for a fact "there's nobody on those benches - maybe about five - that don't believe him, and it nauseates me to hear the way they carry on".

So imperious had he become by now that he even gave the Minister of Foreign Affairs his full title, "Deputy Raphael P. Burke". It sounded so good to him he kept repeating it and after the sixth occasion, we began to suspect he was engaging in a bit of a time-wasting exercise himself.

Earlier, exchanges had taken a surreal turn when Pat Rabbitte began thinking aloud about possible bone fide sources for Mr Haughey's wealth. "He could be breeding ponies," mused the Democratic Left TD. "And selling them to Mr Goodman," he added, after more thought. "Then they could be turned into petfood," suggested Michael Noonan. "And returned to the food chain as petfood," agreed the DL man.

Even Joe Higgins got sucked into this Rabbitte stew, adding a theory about a goat. Alluding to the biblical parable, he accused the main parties of using Messrs Haughey and Lowry "like the old goat, piling all their troubles on the head on the goat and turning it out into the wilderness". Not that Joe had any sympathy for the Haughey/Lowry goat - he just thought they should have more company in the wilderness.

Comrade Gormley took up the refrain, suggesting Fianna Fail was quite happy now "to drive stakes through Mr Haughey's heart". But while Haughey was gone, he added, "the Haugheyites live on".