Still none the wiser as Enda can’t ask and Bertie won’t answer

ALL forms of human life washed up at the Four Courts yesterday — and the swirling tide of those bathing in the wrath or warmth of justice included a certain Mr B Ahern.

Of course, An Taoiseach did not actually appear in Court Six as he has been in hiding since Easter Sunday, when he disappeared from the 1916 parade with the speed of a bunny-shaped chocolate egg in a greedy child’s hand.

It was probably just as well he was keeping his head down as the poky little room would hardly have been the most salubrious place to re-enter the real world from his place of refuge.

Maybe Mr Ahern has been in the same bunker as the other invisible man of politics, Enda Kenny, this past fortnight of drama. It would be a comforting image to think of them huddling together — one terrified of finally losing power, the other terrified of actually gaining it.

There would have been little room for the Taoiseach anyway, as hordes of heat-seeking pensioners and curious legal eagles crowded into the small space, despite the fact the arguments being presented to the three High Court judges were as dry as the powdered hair pieces on display. Indeed, there were more men sporting ill-fitting wigs in the room than you would usually find this side of an amateur drag night.

Bertie has gone from dig-out to wig-out in one easy constitutional confrontation.

Luckily, this being the unfriendly fire of lawyer- on-lawyer action, there were no witnesses to be called to give evidence — good news for the members of the Cabinet who know there is no danger of them being asked a tricky question under oath, such as, er, do you believe the Taoiseach was telling the truth under oath?

Just like in Peter Pan when we are told that every time someone says they do not believe in fairies, a fairy dies. Dastardly blueshirts and scornful socialists must now cheerfully feel that every time a cabinet minister refuses to say they believe in Bertie another bit of the Taoiseach’s fairytale to the tribunal dies.

Not so much Peter Pan as Bertie Going Down the Pan.

Mr Ahern’s cheerleaders declared victory in his delaying tactics, sorry, importantly principled legal challenge. The tribunal said they would not try to trip him up when he is back in the witness box by daring to quote his own words in the Dáil back at him.

But in the other key area being fought over, whether he should give up documents from Paddy “the banker” Stronge, Mr Ahern was left citing a recent ruling by the House of Lords in London for support.

It is just one of the deep ironies in all this that the leader of Fianna Fáil — the Republican Party — is relying on the Law Lords in the Palace of Westminster to help him out of his travails.

All this bickering and we still do not know why Mr Ahern swore under oath only wages cheques went into his Irish Permanent accounts, when it has been proven that Stg£15,500 in did.

As the tide of attention shifts today from the Four Courts to the court of representative democracy in the Dáil chamber, Mr Kenny and Mr Ahern both stand accused as charged: of knowingly being the leader of the opposition who can’t ask a decent question, and the Taoiseach who refuses to answer one.