Dail Sketch/ Frank McNally: You can see why the PDs so identify with the plight of wild salmon. The Government's life-cycle has reached the stage where the smaller party - a permanently threatened species - badly needs to exert its independence.
It may even have started thinking about a return to its native spawning grounds, a long way upstream (and up-ground) from where it is now.
This threatens to be an arduous journey, which will involve swimming against the current, and leaping countless crises along the way.
For the moment, though, the PD salmon is still at sea with Fianna Fáil. And as the latest scandal in the health service reverberated yesterday, the opposition was out fishing with a drift-net. The death of Patrick Walsh at Monaghan General Hospital united the anti-
Government parties as few enough events do.
There was no other issue on the Dáil's agenda. Only the style of contributions differed. Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte discussed the tragedy in soft voices. The Fine Gael leader regretting quietly that there had been "no room at the inn for bachelor Walsh", while leaving no doubt that he was looking across the Dáil floor at the innkeepers.
The Taoiseach, too, spoke softly, sympathising with the bereaved family and promising an independent inquiry. But with the licence of local TDs, independent Paudge Connolly and Sinn Féin's Caoimhghin O Caolain raised the decibel level, the latter asking how many more people would have to die before the Government parties "heed the cry of a people who are not second-class citizens and who will not accept a second-class service".
The PDs had all the separateness they would have wished for, and more, during questions to the Minister for Health. Mary Harney and Tim O'Malley had the Government benches to themselves, in fact, although this is one area where the PDs may want to spread the credit to Fianna Fáil.
As it was, Ms Harney's apparent willingness to share policymaking with the head of the Health Services Executive was interpreted by successive critics as "washing her hands".
In the opposition's view, if health professionals generally were as good at hand-washing as the Tánaiste, then MRSA and other infections would be less prevalent in hospitals.
Pat Rabbitte was pessimistic, however. Seizing on Ms Harney's claim that the numbers of patients on trolleys had fallen by a quarter "between April and September", he pointed out that this period was "high summer" and suggested the winter vomiting bug would soon change the picture.
It was a measure of the seriousness of exchanges yesterday that the avian flu provided light relief.
The Greens' John Gormley thanked the Government for briefing opposition health spokespeople on the issue and said they had been told that, in the event of a pandemic, the general election could not be held. Finding a silver lining in the cloud, he wondered: "Could the election be brought forward?"