In recent years, we’ve had a number of strong debaters leading Irish political parties - Pat Rabbitte, Michael McDowell, Michael Noonan, etc. In the Dáil chamber, these deputies have delivered clever lines and withering put downs without a blink. Their supporters cheer them on; their party colleagues whoop from the benches. But winning the argument hasn’t done their parties’ electoral fortunes any good whatsoever.

Yesterday, Brian Cowen had his first face-to-face with Enda Kenny since becoming leader-designate of Fianna Fáil. Their last major set piece encounter left FF supporters gagging for more as Cowen delivered a now famous retort to Kenny that he was ‘neither qualified nor able’ of judging the activities at the Tribunal (Cowen is obviously an eminent legal expert thanks to the his brief period as a solicitor before his election at 24). He’ll wipe the floor with poor Enda - came the FF chorus. Fine Gael might as well just give up as Biffo will crush them in the Dáil.

If yesterday’s contest is anything to go by, FF may be seriously misguided. Enda brought up the harrowing issue of 77 year old Alzheimer’s patient who sat on a trolley in the Mater’s A&E for 67 hours after suffering a heart attack. The woman’s plight was raised through the media by her daughter resulting in her finally getting a bed. After 48 hours, she begged to die rather than continue in Third World purgatory.

Cowen went into technocrat mode, replying:

It is very important to point out that there are many improvements taking place in the health service. Obviously there are issues but if the Leader of the Opposition’s tactic is to come in and talk about a particular case where there is a difficulty and suggest that the sorting out of that difficulty alone is to sort the health service is a rather simplistic and facile approach and analysis.

Clearly what we are trying to do is to bring reforms into the health service that will deal with many of the perennial problems we are facing.

Word like ‘facile’ are cold, and to a casual listener sound like the opinions of a disconnected bureaucrat; one who is unmoved by the fact that an elderly mother only received essential treatment when her daughter begged for it through the airwaves, a woman who considered death better than days left in her own faeces in an over-crowded accident and emergency unit.

If Cowen wants to go down the cold, clinical route, then the Taoiseach-in-waiting might have a point that there is a policy equivalent of the maxim that tough cases make for bad law. However, the truth is that there were nearly 8,000 patients on trolleys in February.

This is not an isolated case, it’s uniqueness is the bravery and determination of the family to use all available means to see their sick mother treated. If a case is extraordinary then he would have a point, but it isn’t.

His reply is an insult to the thousands of families affected, and if he keeps up this style of debate, Fianna Fáil may have to significantly revise their predictions of Cowen-v-Kenny.