Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it is a jet! It is the €8k-an-hour people’s jet!

DIANA may have been the “people’s princess,” but the Government’s Air Corps Lear is the “people’s jet” and it has been just as soundly used and abused by the establishment as poor old Lady Di ever was, according to an enraged Enda Kenny.

The Fine Gael leader was railing at the way ministers had betrayed the Queen of Irish Skies for their own enjoyment and amusement.

When the Taoiseach could not even show enough respect to the “people’s jet” to call her by her rightful name, Mr Kenny’s outrage sent him shooting into the lower atmosphere of hysteria himself.

Brian Cowen was cut dead mid-sentence when he dared venture: “The issue the deputy raised was about the plane...”

“It is a jet! It is the people’s jet!” the leader of the opposition reprimanded, now livid at the way the “people’s” twin-engined twinkle was being openly mocked by the tardy Taoiseach. Mr Cowen was not happy about being corrected and so began to hurtle down the runway of rage himself, accusing Enda of trying to grab “a few tabloid headlines” and starting this same old “craic” about the “jet” again.

“It is not craic!” Mr Kenny insisted like the retired teacher he is, bridling as if he was back in mid-1970s Mayo laying down the law to an uppity fifth-class clown.

Mr Kenny looked like he could bear little more of this jet-set state-hate directed at the people’s lovely light aircraft and demanded the Cabinet handbook be specifically re-written that instant so no one could go near the Lear again – or even peer at the Lear – without a damn good reason. Enda has never forgiven Health Minister Mary Harney for leading the “people’s jet” astray and whisking it off to the bright lights of Las Vegas on a 2008 “fact-finding” mission to the US south west meant to assess lessons from American cancer treatment.

We all remember this infamous “fact-finding” mission by Ms Harney – mainly due to the fact she was found enjoying the Super Bowl in the middle of it. And given that the “people’s jet” costs some €8,000 an hour to run, Mr Kenny’s concern that it is being used as a gold-plated flying taxi at the taxpayers’ expense is not unreasonable.

But enraged though he was, Enda just managed to pull back from doing a full Elton John and rewriting Candle in the Wind to mark the sorrowful occasion.

Shame really, he was so worked up he’d certainly have done Diana’s memory proud: “Goodbye Ireland’s Health Minister/On the people’s jet you rose/Landing in Las Vegas/Home of all those casinos.

“Did you find your facts?/Sitting in the front row of the Super Bowl?/ While the people’s jet bleeds us dry to the tune of €8,000 an hour every time you go/And it seems to me you live your ministerial life in grandeur in the sky/Never thinking that economy might be a better way to fly...”