Makes sense. SSIAs are about to be Viagra to our already libidinous economy, but in a year, we'll moan about how they resurrected inflation.

But what if Bertie is in play to succeed Kofi Annan as UN Secretary General in December?

Bertie is the ideal compromise candidate if there's Security Council deadlock, and he knows it.

Who would succeed Bertie?

Paddy Power rates Brian Cowen an overwhelming 1-3 favourite, followed by Micheal Martin and Noel Dempsey. But the dark horse is the candidate who offers Fianna Fail what it really wants, what it's always been clever enough to find . . . a way to renew its dominance of Irish politics for another generation.

Meet Mary Hanafin, our first female taoiseach and walking solution to the suburban female floating voter.

Impeccable biography, flawless communicator and a spooky skill for channelling the sensible values of Middle Ireland. Reformer and traditionalist. Cool and precise intelligence leavened with warmth.

Hibernian country cred and cosmopolitan urban poll-topper. In a Cabinet now so accident-prone it needs its own A&E ward, Hanafin exudes competence and focus.

She consistently impresses, whether at an ardfheis or in an RTE studio. Her performance on Pat Kenny last week was the best yet. She managed to do something that her peers in and out of government have singularly failed to do . . . thread the needle on the Catholic role in schools. She talks sense while appealing to both traditionalists who want that role to remain and to those who want change.

When a listener said it put him off teaching, Hanafin went straight to her brief: "I really need that man teaching. Only 11% of students in teachertraining colleges are male and that's not good for the profession and it's not good for the children. I think they deserve to have role models who are both male and female."

She doesn't get ruffled. She addresses real, practical problems before getting into ideology. Then she pivots to the issue of "the changing face of management in schools".

"Of the 3,200 primary schools in the country, around 3,000 of them are run by Catholic boards of management.

That's tradition. That's the way it has developed. They provided education for children, and in areas where it would never have been provided."

Then she hails the (secular) Gaelscoileanna and Educate Together schools, and notes that she increased their funding.

Pressed on whether a dominant Catholic role remains right for an Ireland flourishing with students from an ever-wider variety of cultural backgrounds, she stresses that the Catholic-run schools have been inclusive while maintaining quality.

There are three vitally important ideas here, well delivered. First, the "changing face" of school management means that, with vocations decimated, change is happening and inevitable, but at a pace which, so far, is comfortable for most parents.

Second, there will be no Henry VIII-style confiscations of schools owned by parishes . . . though sales may well appeal to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin in his cash crunch to pay abuse victims, an elegant solution vastly superior to her predecessor's giveaway indemnity deal. Third, the greater the number of cultural influences in Ireland, the greater the need for schools not to fragment but to find new ways to transmit values and let newcomers become Irish.

Because of those changes and the need for ever-smarter knowledge workers in a global economy, making the right choices on the future of our schools is vital. Education, along with energy security and resilience in the face of climate change, will determine our economy and politics for the foreseeable future. Hanafin gets that.

Smart, tough, honouring traditional values in a modern way in an increasingly complex world. And, not to get all Jerry Cowley on the issue, she's going to look better on the poster than some of her wouldbe rivals. Which, if it's worth 5% in a five-seater, will be enough for most of the soldiers to know where their interests lie.