Dáil Sketch / Miriam Lord:We thought it was a brave move by Enda, asking Bertie to expound for him on the subject of the incinerators, and how many of them there might be.
First off, there are the incinerators in the media. Then there are the incinerators in the tribunal. Not to mention the incinerators in the Opposition.
Oh yes, there are plenty of incinerators, and Bertie Ahern knows who they are.
There are the incinerations that have been made about him accepting large sums of money for his private use when he was a serving minister for finance. And there are the incinerations that he went along to a tribunal of inquiry, which he helped to establish, and told hilariously conflicting yarns about how he might have come by the aforementioned cash.
Incinerations going back nearly 20 years. How is a busy Taoiseach expected to remember? In fairness to Bertie, he didn't decide to get hold of the wrong end of the stick yesterday.
As he demonstrated during Leaders Questions on Tuesday, he can turn any subject into an opportunity to remind the House how hard done by he's been by the tribunal.
But no, he decided to keep to the subject and tackle the incinerator question head on. Which, in Bertie's case, means taking a sideways zig-zag run at it. This slows people while they try to work out whether or not he gave a proper answer.
It would be nice to say the Taoiseach adopted his zig-zagging approach to questions after watching footage of individuals fleeing angry alligators. But, given that he regularly employs this tactic in the face of a charging Indakinny, this could hardly be the case.
Anyway, the Fine Gael leader wasn't really interested in attacking the Taoiseach yesterday. He had Green leader and Minister for the Environment Minister John Gormley in his sights. His intention was to embarrass John, who recently said that Ireland requires no more than two incinerators to deal with waste that can't be reused or recycled. (A happy turn of events, what with a big incinerator earmarked for Poolbeg, in the heart of John's Dublin South East constituency.) The Minister's considerably smaller figure, remarked Enda, contradicted the hitherto stated Government view that eight incinerators are needed around the country to process waste. So what is Government policy: eight or two incinerators? It was such a good question, Enda asked twice, rooted to the spot as Bertie zig-zagged in front of him.
The Taoiseach didn't entirely row back on his Minister's talk of a mere two incinerators, nor did he entirely rule out the possibility of the full eight getting the green light. However, between the jigs and the reels and the wonders of modern technology in the Nordic countries, the mid-table figure of four might look most likely.
Going forward. But don't hold him to it."A load of rubbish. A load of rubbish," snorted Fine Gael's Bernard Allen.
The way Bertie saw it, as he happily skirted around a straight answer, "we should take account of the most modern technology available, and as we have not started to build the incinerators, why should we use technology that is six or seven years out of date?" he argued. "That's a valid point for the Minister to make." The Taoiseach might consider applying that logic to his Government's stockpile of useless e-voting machines, growing more out of date by the day in their expensive air-conditioned lodgings around the country.
All together now: two, four, six, eight, where do we incinerate? Eight six four two, burn those e-vote boxes through...