Bertie should go without having to be dragged out snarling at people

LITTLE over a week before the current Dáil met for the first time a senior counsel who has worked on the staff of at least one tribunal was asked who was going to be the next Taoiseach.

“I don’t know,” he replied, “but Brian Cowen will be within six months.”

It wasn’t that he had any inside information, but he considered Des O’Neill the best barrister in the country and he felt he must know something that none of the rest of us knows to adopt the attitude he had been taking at the tribunal. Bertie Ahern accused Des O’Neill this week of “trying to set me up and stitch me up”.