Dáil Sketch/Frank McNally: The Iraq crisis continued to haunt Leinster House yesterday, despite valiant efforts by the Government to create the impression of business as usual.
No effort was more valiant than that of the Taoiseach - fresh from the meeting of his war cabinet that ordered the Army into Shannon, to defend US planes from pacifists with lump-hammers.
A little later, the same Bertie Ahern was on his feet in the Dáil to propose that Ireland's ratification of the "Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds" be referred to a committee for consideration.
The proposal provided a light moment in the gathering gloom. Hearing Bertie Ahern tackle a phrase such as "conservation of African-Eurasian migratory waterbirds" is like watching an erratic show-jumper approach a triple combination in slippery conditions at the RDS. Even after he emerged from the sentence with a clear round, the atmosphere in the house remained giddy.
Some Opposition members dared to questioned Mr Ahern's grasp of the African-Eurasian migratory birdlife issue. But, his feathers unruffled, the Taoiseach informed them that the pact would benefit "whooper swans", a detail that rendered the opposition mute.
There was no escaping the war, however, and it was the conservation of American migratory flying machines in the Shannon wetlands that dominated business. Fine Gael attacked the Government over the Freedom of Information Act; Labour raised the State's indemnity for religious institutions; but the noise from the Western Front was drowning everything else out.
Sinn Féin, now more pacifist than the pacifists themselves, condemned Ireland's involvement in illegal military activity. The Greens, whose recycling policies had extended to Gerry Adams's old scripts - the ones refusing to engage in the politics of condemnation - after the Shannon attacks, recovered from that embarrassment to mount a new offensive.
Trevor Sargent asked if the Taoiseach's objection to weapons of mass destruction extended to US "daisy-cutter bombs". Mr Ahern refused this invitation "to draw me into equating Iraq with the US". At which point John Gormley entered swinging a verbal lump-hammer: "A bomb is a bomb, Taoiseach."
Meanwhile, on the Fine Gael benches, an oddly familiar figure appeared during the debate on the Order of Business. Was it a bird? Was it a plane? No, it was the lesser-spotted (since the election) Michael Noonan, proposing an emergency debate on the security breaches at Shannon and the Government's "incompetence". His proposal was ruled out of order. But the Government had already responded to the attacks on its Shannon policy, verbal and otherwise, and the Army was heading for the front.