In a household overseen by our touchyfeely commander in chief, one might expect hugs to be a daily ritual. When it comes to embracing, Mary McAleese is the cat's pyjamas, so how could one of her hugs lead to truckloads of animus?

Yes, animus. That was the buzzword in Court No 13 of the Four Courts last week. The air was thick with animus as two sides from within the Aras squared up to each other. Bridget Conway is the protocol officer to Prez McAleese. She says she's getting the bum's rush from her superiors, one of whom resented Mac giving her a hug back in '98. There's been no end to the animus since then.

Conway says she's been grounded.

She's not allowed to accompany the Prez on her various expeditions around the globe to embrace peoples and bore the pants off their leaders. Now Conway is standing her ground. She wants to halt disciplinary proceedings against her, which she says are contrived, designed as a way to remove her from her post.

Talk about animus.

On Thursday, her lawyer Roddy Horan opened the case. He said it was a "bad faith animus" case which sounds really terrible. He paused at various junctures in his flowing narrative to refer to "my opponent", the lawyer sitting opposite him, representing the defendants. My opponent? There was a time when these lawyers referred to the fella on the other side as "my friend", or "my learned friend". Now, as the easy personal injuries money has gone west, it's "my opponent". Is this animus spreading into the law library? Has the world truly gone to pot?

Anyway, he wants the judge to halt these disciplinary proceedings against his client. If that's not done and if ultimately Conway is found to have been wronged, damages, her lawyer points out, wouldn't be a sufficient remedy.

He wants relief through an interlocutary injunction, which is a standard instrument of relief in the courts. In layman's terms, he wants to put the kybosh in the alleged plans to shaft her.

Bridget Conway was in situ for the two-day hearing, accompanied by friends who came to support her. At quiet times during the hearing they shared an occasional few words, but there was no hugging in court.

The allegations against her are baseless, according to Horan, driven by "the personal animus" of one Loughlin Quinn, now the deputy secretary general to the president. The secretary general, Brian McCarthy, witnessed the infamous hug, according to Conway. He challenged her to explain "all this hugging stuff".

One of the allegations subsequently made against her has to do with falsifying documents. Another touches on the matter of bullying. According to her lawyer, one alleged instance of this bullying manifested itself in her refusal to comment when a colleague received flowers. Are we talking shrinking violets here? Surely there are the makings of a touchy-feely tribunal in there if that dastardly allegation is substantiated.

After Horan had outlined his client's case, his opponent, Mark Connaughton, got up to put his side of the story. He pointed to the grief that this whole business was bringing down on the country by its interference in the operation of government.

"It is disruptive to the running of an important branch of government, " he told the judge. "And I use that in a constitutional sense with a small g." The animus business, he said, was wide of the mark. None of the chaps Conway complained of had any problem with her. In fact, McCarthy had twice approved her for promotion since he was appointed in 1997. Crucially, however, the lawyer didn't indicate whether the approvals were pre- or post- the by now notorious hug.

There was a brief respite from the animus on Friday morning when top barrister Colm Allen was in court to tell the judge, Kevin Feeney, what an almighty chap he is.

This was the judge's first case since his recent appointment to the bench, and there he was, just getting used to having been elevated from commoner to "your lordship", when in walks this former colleague to praise him to the rafters.

Allen said he was sure the new appointee would have a "stellar judicial career" to follow the top notch one he enjoyed at the bar. Judge Feeney accepted the comments graciously, and prompted a ripple of giggles with a mildly amusing reply.

The sideshow of excessive laurels and laughter from on high was a brief respite from the animus that has soured relations in Mac's gaff up in the Park. This one will run and run.