They had victory in their sights in May. Bertie was on the ropes: too many patients on trolleys;
nurses and consultants up in arms; a looming property-market slump.

There was a clear alternative on offer. Would the voters chose change over more of the same?

Though tempted, they plumped for security and stability with a genuflection towards green concerns.

They won't like to hear this, but Fine Gael and Labour blew the election, not during the campaign but by the poverty of their performance in the last Dail. Over five years, they rarely landed a punch that had any real impact. They were fractured and incoherent on major policy areas and voters weren't taken in by the late show of unity.

A weak opposition is just as dangerous as a bad government. Maybe the punters reckoned that, if they were making such a bad fist of it in opposition, they couldn't be trusted to run the country. Were they doing their job of making the government answerable to the Dail? Does anyone recall a killer parliamentary question from FG or Labour that could have toppled the last government?

Each deputy can table an unlimited number of written PQs to serving ministers; this process mostly goes on under the radar.

Large numbers of civil servants are deployed to do little else besides draft these replies. Oral questions are more high-profile and limited in number, and are usually delegated to party spokespersons who verbally challenge ministers in the chamber.

Sadly, over the years, an unhealthy minimalism has crept in to ministerial replies, particularly when the subject matter has the potential to expose the minister in question to political damage. When this writer was in opposition marking the ministers for health and justice, my questions were regularly thwarted and evaded. The infection of hundreds of Irish women with hepatitis C by anti-D and the cover-up of state responsibility was a classic case of the Dail being misled over a long period. The truth emerged, not as a result of our many efforts in the Dail but in documents discovered in the legal action taken by the late Brigid McCole.

When in opposition, it was a forensic challenge to table questions to ministers. I even came to recognise the style and personality of the anonymous drafter of the replies. How sad is that? A dead giveaway that a department or minister is on the run is when the question is transferred like a hot potato to another department or there is a delay in the reply.

When I tabled questions about the delay in extraditing paedophile priest Brendan Smith from Northern Ireland to face charges here, it prompted a chain of events in the attorney general's office which contributed to the collapse of the then Fianna Fail-Labour government. That question had been tossed around in the various departments as officials frantically tried to explain what had happened.

Incredibly, the new Rainbow government nearly met the same fate when they fudged a related question of mine about unanswered correspondence from the victims of Brendan Smith to the new attorney general.

Had questions tabled in the Dail by Des O'Malley, Pat Rabbitte and others been honestly answered, there would have been no need for the beef tribunal. Freedom of information requests are now all the rage with journalists, a whole new bureaucracy seeming to eclipse the PQ as a tool of accountability. But take it from an old hand . . . the PQ is your only man when it comes to rattling or even toppling governments.

Under our system of parliamentary democracy, if the Dail is misled by a dishonest reply to a PQ, the ultimate sanction is ministerial resignation. Because to lie to the Dail is a mortal parliamentary offence.

So a word of advice to new deputies: less bluster and more attention to detail is the way to go. Don't underestimate the power of the humble PQ. It is a key instrument in your armour as a public representative. If you smell a rat, table a question and don't give up if you get a crooked reply. Pile on a series of follow-up questions to flush out the truth.

Secondly, use Dail legal privilege, afforded to you by the constitution for good reason, to say things in the chamber which need to be said in the public interest.

To the new Ceann Comhairle, a man of integrity and experience, I would say this. Use your constitutional high office to be a champion of the Dail and its independence. The government should fear you. Our democracy has been weakened by a gradual erosion of the power of the legislature vis-a-vis the executive.

There has never been a more important time to restore clout to Dail Eireann. If our parliament is working to its full capacity, our democracy will work better and tribunals, like the dinosaurs, will be no more.