Dail Sketch/Miriam Lord:Once upon a time in the Dáil, there was an opposition. It was called Fianna Fáil. Seldom, as the saying goes, is wonderful.
These were the halcyon days, when no government minister was safe and the chamber reverberated daily to the indignant roars of marauding Soldiers of Destiny.
No matter what the rainbow coalition said or did, it was lacerated. Minor issues were magnified. Rifts, real or imaginary, were ruthlessly exposed and exploited. Resignations were demanded on a regular basis.
Fianna Fáil shamelessly hunted and harried their government quarry, with scant regard for parliamentary niceties. It was their job, and they got stuck in. If they couldn't play the ball, they played the man or woman.
Their star was John O'Donguhue, who marked justice minister Nora Owen and thought he was Genghis Khan. Nice Nora couldn't say a thing without an accompanying chorus of wails from an apoplectic Bull, predicting the nation was about to descend into anarchy.
But all that was over 10 years ago. Today, the Bull sits, snug and comfy, in the Ceann Comhairle's chair. Fianna Fáil sits, snug and comfy, on the Government benches.
Unfortunately, the Opposition is snug and comfy too. Enda Kenny is a pussycat. Try as he might, he can't locate his inner thug. Eamon Gilmore is more of a scrapper, but he can't sustain the aggression.
Bertie Ahern should be gasping on the ropes, but he feints this way and that and rolls with the punches. Mary Harney should be unconscious on the canvas by now. Mary Hanafin, embroiled in the autism services row, should be taking a standing count.
Oh, for a return to the halcyon days, when Dáil questions weren't conducted like a parent-teacher meeting.
Yesterday morning was a case in point. Enda Kenny returned to the debate over education services for autistic children, which continues to rage outside the Dáil. Ms Hanafin's handling of the issue has provoked outrage among parents, and, more significantly, dissent among some of her party colleagues.
A Fianna Fáil opposition would have raised the issue too. However, not in the way Enda Kenny did yesterday. He made an earnest little speech with a lots of questions and hoped the matter could be brought to a speedy conclusion.
Bertie replied at length - nobody can outwaaffle the master. And that was that.
In the good old days, a taoiseach wouldn't have got off so lightly. His queasy backbench footsoldiers would have been ridiculed and embarrassed, his minister pushed further into the mire and the victorious opposition leader would have been borne aloft from the chamber on the shoulders of his cheering troops, spent from the effort but radiating the goodness that can only accrue to the moral victor.
Eamon Gilmore asked about a laptop with Blood Transfusion Service data on it stolen in New York. Short of accusing the Taoiseach of carrying out the mugging by proxy, there was little mileage in the question.
"These things, unfortunately, happen" shrugged Bertie, shaking his head.
"It is incredibly sloppy and ironic" lamented Eamon.
Bertie nodded. "The data was encrypted using a 256-bit key encryption prior to export on the CD" he declared. The Taoiseach hadn't a clue what he was talking about, but neither did anyone else, apart from some of the younger deputies.
The Taoiseach's backbenchers are privately unhappy over autism services, and the new rules for pharmacies, and the state of the health service and their leader's tribunal embarrassments.
They'd make a great opposition. Bertie is a lucky guy. He might even find the laptop. He could make a public plea for its return when he addresses Congress in April.
The Taoiseach went off last night to launch a new handbook for property developers. This, on the eve of his appearance before the planning tribunal.
The irony was lost yesterday on the Opposition. Haven't they've raised the issue a few times already? It would be bad manners to bring it up again.
Opportunities abound for the Opposition, and yet the main talking point in Leinster House was the stupidity of a Fine Gael rookie deputy who copied parts of a speech made by Joan Burton and passed it off as his own.
Fianna Fáil, rightly, made hay.
Please, please, please Bertie, lend them The Bull - sadly silenced in his new role - on a free transfer.
For the sake of the nation.