Dáil Sketch/Frank McNally: Tom Gilmartin's offer to the Mahon tribunal to "paint" the scene of his alleged meeting with Cabinet members in 1989 has made a deep impact on Joe Higgins.
The tribunal may not have accepted the offer, but like a medium with a sketch-pad, the Socialist TD has already picked up on Mr Gilmartin's psychic brush-strokes. And yesterday, he was offering to recreate the image for the Dáil.
"The picture Mr Gilmartin has etched on our minds....,." he began, before the Ceann Comhairle intervened sharply to tell him he was already out of order. But Mr Higgins was more than out of order - he was temporarily out of contact. Still receiving telepathic messages from Dublin Castle, he pressed on with his description of the picture.
"It's as clear as The Last Supper in my mind," he said, whereupon the Chair intervened again to tell him that his mind was where it should stay.
"But all the apostles are denying they were at the meeting," continued Joe, oblivious, and getting deeper and deeper into the trance, while Dr O'Hanlon tried to snap him out of it with quotes from standing orders.
The telepathy was infectious, however, and now Trevor Sargent could see The Last Supper too. "Mary Magdalen said she was there," suggested the Green Party leader.
It was getting weird now, and there was relief all round when the Ceann Comhairle finally persuaded Joe to put away his etchings.
There then followed a discussion about why, given that "the whole country is talking about (Gilmartin's evidence)", the Dáil could not join the debate.
Dr O'Hanlon's view was that the whole country was not subject to Standing Order 56, whereas the House was.
Elsewhere on the agenda, the mid-March exodus from the Dáil began a day early when Labour's Emmet Stagg was expelled for persistent interruption of Leaders' Questions. His own leader, Pat Rabbitte, had used the annual flight of the wild geese (Government representatives going abroad to commune with the diaspora) to raise the issue of Irish emigrants fallen on hard times. And Mr Stagg angrily interrupted the Taoiseach's reply to suggest that the Government was offering such people sympathy but "no money".
But his persistent haranguing of the Taoiseach was too much for the Chair, which intervened to suggest he go into temporary exile.