According to Thursday's Irish Times, the Taoiseach replied thus: "Reports are done in such cases. Every department is complex and deals with a huge range of issues. I always defend those involved in such matters." It wasn't the most revelatory or informative statement ever made to the Dail, but it did, at least, have the virtues of coherence and brevity.

Except that isn't what the Taoiseach said at all. Elsewhere in the Irish Times on Thursday, the peerless Miriam Lord reported on what she described as the "uncut version" of what Ahern said. Here it is: "In relation to minister Dempsey's department, or my own department, I mean, there are sometimes, for some reason and another, something isn't brought to the attention of all the relevant people, whether that's the Taoiseach, or minister, minister of state or some other public servant . . . there will be reports done in that case . . . but I have to say, in fairness, in every department it is complex, there's a huge range of issues going on and I would always defend those involved in them because it's so easy, I mean, when I walk . . . deputy Kenny will appreciate . . . when I walked the corridor to here, I'm everyday, I'm everyday and back, caught by officials and well 'is it all right by me if we move in this or what we'd said last week at a cabinet committee or there's this meeting in Northern Ireland or there's this meeting in Europe' and I give instant decisions."

The Taoiseach meandered on. "If I was to think every time, then some official goes in, puts this all in an email. If you were to show me that in two months, you know, the complexities that are involved in that, the only thing I find . . . you would wouldn't take this away from me . . . is watching this: how everyone is having so much difficulty remembering what happened a month ago and the eminent people in another location expecting me to answer remember everything with certainty what happened 17 years ago, but that's maybe they accredit me more intelligence than everyone else, but anyway."

If you take the trouble today to go to the Houses of the Oireachtas website and check the record of what the Taoiseach said on Wednesday morning in the Dail, you'll find that it bears only a cousinly resemblance to what actually came out of his mouth. His statement has been tidied up, grammar and punctuation have been added and it lies there in the record as an articulate, comprehensible series of words and sentences.

Which is fine, if unreliable as an accurate record of Dail business.

The Houses of the Oireachtas notetakers are not in the business of making the Taoiseach look like he thinks syntax means a tariff on adultery. When, however, the paper of record does Bertie Ahern the favour of cleaning up after the devastation he perpetrates on the English language, very many questions are raised.

Different newspapers have different policies on whether a person's quotes should be published accurately, precisely as he or she said them. Earlier this year, the Washington Post was confronted by the same kind of dilemma that affected the Irish Times last week when two different journalists . . . one a columnist, the other a sports reporter . . . quoted Washington Redskins footballer Clinton Portis in two different ways. The reporter quoted him as saying, "I don't know how anybody feels. I don't know how anybody's thinking. I don't know what anyone else is going through. The only thing I know is what's going on in Clinton Portis's life." What he actually said, and what was accurately reported by the columnist, was: "I don't know how nobody feel, I don't know what nobody think, I don't know what nobody doing, the only thing I know is what's going on in Clinton Portis's life."

Portis is black, as is the reporter who changed his quote and who believes what he did was perfectly justified. "For me, " he said, "having covered athletes for 15 years, I've always felt conscious and uncomfortable about the differences in class, background and race . . . I'm an AfricanAmerican . . . and in terms of people who are doing the speaking and people who are doing the writing, I really don't like to make people look stupid, especially when I understand what they are saying."

That seems like a reasonable argument to make, if a little politically correct. If somebody has been poorly educated, for whatever reason, and does not enjoy the same command of a language as some others, there may be a case to be made for not quoting him precisely, lest his lack of command of grammar, syntax and the rest make him appear "stupid", to use the word quoted above. But what about somebody who trades in words, whose pronouncements and statements are his stock in trade?

Somebody like a Taoiseach, for example?

Bertie Ahern is not badly educated, even if he is a little hazy on the details of where he received his education. Neither is he stupid.

There is no good reason, therefore, to springclean his statements for public consumption. In Ahern's case, there may even be a case for insisting he be quoted accurately at all times, so that we can witness the deliberate obfuscations and confusions of meaning which are his stock in trade.

To tidy him up, to give meaning to the kind of aimless musings he indulged in in the Dail on Wednesday, is to bestow a massive favour on him and to protect him from the need to give straight answers to straight questions. It's not the responsibility of the Irish Times, or any other newspaper, to make the Taoiseach sound as if he knows what he's talking about.

That's the Taoiseach's job.

Highlighting the fact that he doesn't always do it is the job of journalism.