Dail sketch/ Frank McNally: There's a careworn air about the Minister for Health these days. She may or may not agree with Brian Cowen's description of her department as "Angola".
But after eight months in Hawkins House, Mary Harney already has the haunted look of a war veteran who's seen some bad things.
How she must enjoy days like yesterday when, as Tánaiste, she gets to deputise on Leaders' Questions. Instead of just being blamed for the mismanagement of one area of Government, this is a rare chance to be blamed for the mismanagement of the country as a whole. Light relief, in the circumstances.
The Opposition leaders didn't disappoint her, abandoning their concerted line of Tuesday for a scattergun approach to the issues of the day. Only Pat Rabbitte returned to the Garda Bill, a subject on which his indignation remained savage.
When the Tánaiste praised the Minister for Justice for being "big enough" to accept amendments recommended by the Morris report, the Labour leader snapped that the only thing big enough about Mr McDowell was "his mouth".
The Minister was taking only one amendment, he corrected her, and it did not address the central concern of Mr Justice Morris. The proposed ombudsman commission was "a contradiction in terms", said Mr Rabbitte, who accused Ms Harney of merely repeating the Taoiseach's "mantra" of the day before. "How far standards have fallen," he sniffed, apparently harking back to a golden age of Leaders' Questions that nobody else remembers.
Enda Kenny was no more impressed when, after a brief overview of Government incompetence generally, he berated Ms Harney on the issue of road safety. He cited a recent trip from Kerry to Donegal, which was "an education in terms of the abuse of mobile phones by some truck drivers and many motorists".
In reply, the Tánaiste promised - among other things - a new, dedicated traffic corps to enforce safety standards. But Mr Kenny was not happy. "I'm disappointed by the Tánaiste's response," he said. "She's usually better briefed."
It was a fair bet that Joe Higgins would be disappointed in her too, and he didn't let us down. Regretting the High Court's ban on publication of the labour inspectorate's report on Gama Construction, he accused the Tánaiste of being a champion of the "neo-liberal jungle" in which such companies operated. Even so, he wondered, was she not "incredulous" that the labour laws allowed those who exploited workers to hide behind the courts?
Ms Harney, who must have been incredulous that nobody was questioning her on the state of the health service, begged to disagree.