Groucho Marx once visited a renowned clairvoyant in Chicago. Amid a lot of ceremony the clairvoyant was ushered into his presence and he was invited to ask her any question, any question at all. Groucho asked: "What is the capital of North Dakota?"
A few questions remain unanswered by our rulers and betters as we enter the New Year and perhaps they might resolve to answer them in 2001. They are quite simple really, no need for fifty-fifty or asking the audience or phoning a friend.
We start with Bertie, three batches of questions for Bertie. The first batch is: why did you send poor Dermot Ahern to London in June 1997 to ask Joseph Murphy jnr whether his company, JMSE, had given Ray Burke £30,000 in June 1989 when you already knew from Ray Burke that it had done that? And why did you not tell Dermot Ahern before he went what you knew already? What were you up to and what did you think was going on when Dermot Ahern returned to tell you that JMSE was denying it had given any money to Ray Burke?
Now another batch. When Ray Burke made his "explanatory" statement in the Dail in September 1997 about the JMSE payment and claimed he had given £10,000 of the £30,000 to Fianna Fail headquarters, several of your close advisers knew that this was untrue. They knew the £10,000 he had passed on to Fianna Fail in June 1989 was not from the JMSE money but from the £30,000 he had got from Sir AJF O'Reilly's Fitzwilton.
How was it that none of them told you at the time or even before then? How was it that when you were looking up every tree in north Dublin one of them did not come around to you and say, by the way, Ray Burke got not just £30,000 from JMSE in June 1989 but he also got £30,000 from Sir AJF and God only knows how much more he got from others? Did you later ask these close advisers about this and ask why they didn't tell you? Did you remonstrate with them, did you ask: well, is there anything else you haven't told me and, if so, tell me now?
And finally (for now) the Mark Kavanagh question. Mark Kavanagh gave £100,000 to Charles Haughey in June 1989. He didn't get a receipt for it, most of the money went missing. Some of the money was recorded in the Fianna Fail books as an anonymous donation and the receipt for that was sent directly to Mr Haughey's office. In 1996 Mark Kavanagh complained about not having got any acknowledgement for the donation.
The questions are these: how was it that nobody in Fianna Fail mentioned to you in 1996, when Mark Kavanagh made his complaint, that there had been something odd about the donation in 1989, that the donation to Fianna Fail was recorded as an anonymous donation and that the receipt was sent not directly to the donor (as was the usual practice) but directly to Mr Haughey's office? Did you later remonstrate with them about this and ask why they hadn't told you at the time? What did they say?
And when you spoke to Mark Kavanagh yourself about it, how was it that nothing in that conversation between you and him conveyed to you that there had been anything odd about that £100,000 donation to Charles Haughey?
How was it that you didn't ask him what was the background to all that, how much money was involved, what were the circumstances in which the donation was made, who asked for it, who arranged the meeting at Kinsealy? Were you not a teeny-weeny bit curious?
In general, what is it about you that nobody seems to tell you anything and you never seem to ask about anything?
There is just one question for John Bruton: how did Fine Gael become suddenly rich in 1995, the year it got back into government, when it had been on the verge of bankruptcy the previous year? It's a simple straightforward question. No need for frenzied fulminations to the editor. Just please tell us in simple language where did you get the money in 1995?
And a question for Mary Harney. The line spun by your friends over the last several years in explanation of your forbearance in sticking with Bertie in government is that the investigations you have started into corporate and financial corruption would be subverted if you were forced to leave office. When are we going to get the results of these investigations? There is no point to investigations if they are to remain secret for ever. When is the hen going to lay its egg?
Finally, a question for Sir AJF. Another simple question. Where do you live? Simple, isn't it? Where do you live and where have you lived for the last 20 years. We know about the houses in Kilcullen and in Pittsburgh, that's not the question. The question is where do you live? You must know the answer to this.
I have been asking this of your advisers for nearly a year now and they can't, or won't, respond. So please tell us yourself. Where do you live?
And a happy New Year to you all.