If we leave the issue of a new terminal at Dublin airport to the Taoiseach, writes Kevin Myers, we can expect a decision at around the time Kansas City falls the to the North Korean Army.
The Government was meant to have considered a comprehensive package yesterday, but naturally decided to spend its time considering the mayfly crisis, the Argentine economy and Zimbabwean cricket - or anything, that is, apart from the now endless saga of Dublin Airport.
That Operation Dither should reach its latest phase in the week of the 60th anniversary of VE day is almost entertaining, because it was the second World War which gave Irish contractors the opportunity to show what superb airport manufacturers they were. Those old movies of B17s and Lancasters lining up to take off from air bases in Lincolnshire fail to show one thing: the runways were made by Irishmen. If you subtracted Irish brawn and Irish constructional brain from the second World War, the RAF and USAAF bombers would have been wheel-deep in mud and the Third Reich would still begin at Calais.
Airports are what Irish builders do. Constructing runways and associated buildings comes as naturally to the Irish as sausage-making does to the Germans and wine-making to the French. Except with this qualification: after Desmond FitzGerald's superb construction at Collinstown, not in Ireland.
Indeed, some curious cultural pathology is invoked with the very concept of airports in this country. Twenty years ago we built the longest runway in Europe on just about the highest bog, and all to placate a mad monsignor.
We still use the law to compel people to land in Shannon when they have no desire or need to. And now for years, we have been paralysed with indecision about the future of Dublin airport, largely because so many voters work there, and the Taoiseach dreads the notion of a single privately-owned organisation having such power over his electorate.
Which is why, of course, he prefers the State-owned option for the new terminal, because that way he would then be their employer. But of course he won't be, even if he gets his way, because even he cannot remain indefinitely as Taoiseach, while the North Koreans sweep over the Missouri plains.
Now suddenly there is talk of a third terminal: just as with CIÉ buses, you wait for hours, then three come along at the same time. The logic is presumably that there would be a State-owned one for the Taoiseach, and the other would be privately owned, for the PDs. This is air transport policy on the old Gay Byrne principle: an airport for everyone in government.
A coalition comprising Fine Gael, Labour, the Greens, Sinn Féin and Jim McDaid could be rather interesting. The Fine Gael airport would be privately owned, but departures and arrivals would be united, just in case everyone wanted to change their minds, yet again.
The Labour terminal next door would be State-owned, would have two employees for every passenger, and would balance its books by a tax on the private airport, with all flights into the private airport first having a compulsory stop-over at the Labour terminal a mile away. The Green airport would allow wind-powered aircraft only, and there would not be announcements but sermons. The McDaid airport would have planes taking off and landing on the same runway at the same time, but in different directions: air traffic control courtesy of Shane McGowan.
At the Sinn Féin terminal, late check-ins would be knee-capped. The departure lounge would be ten times larger than arrivals, for those, that is, who are allowed - or more usually - ordered to leave; but for many others the terminal would be simply terminal. This is the only airport with three major areas for passengers: arrivals, departures and the morgue.
Perhaps the best solution to the Government's dilemma is a single State-owned terminal, combining both the private and public sectors, but to be managed by Jim Mansfield. For he apparently regards planning laws in much the way that loggers see trees. He'd hardly had his hands on Weston airport for a few moments before it was sprouting buildings. Unauthorised growths mushroomed everywhere, with no more dependence on planning permissions than the Ice Age got when it decided to resculpt the Irish landscape. In a similar fit of feverish absent-mindedness, his Citywest Hotel grew a half a stadium almost overnight, and then naturally sought that curiously Irish phenomenon known as "retention". This is when you break the planning laws, but then seek to make the illegality retrospectively lawful.
With Jim Mansfield in charge, the new terminal at Dublin Airport could probably - and with no-one really noticing until half-time of the Ireland-England World Cup qualifier - sprout a new 100,000-seater national stadium. While the National Concert Hall is still considering its plans for a new auditorium, the duty-free at the new terminal would suddenly find it has grown one for an audience of 2,000, just between its liquors and chocolates sections, and hello, it's already well into the 1812 Overture.
And as for planning permissions, why, the boss is thinking about putting in an application for them any day now. Or seeking retentions, anyway.
Good God, did you see that? One moment there was nothing there, and next, there was this bloody great new national theatre, look, sticking out of departures. And what's that thing sprouting out of the car-park? Why, it's a metro, and not a planning permission in sight.
Ah yes, airport management à la Jane Austen: with some Pride and Prejudice, but even more Mansfield Park.