Dáil dramatics

Friday, July 20, 2012

As the Dáil takes its break, political correspondent Shaun Connolly looks back on a term of tax dodgers, ding-dongs, and declarations of love

MASSACRE OF LOVE

“May I begin by wishing the Taoiseach a very happy Valentine’s Day?” Gerry Adams enquired.

“Thanks,” chipped back an unflattered Taoiseach, before adding: “Sometimes I get all concerned when I hear Deputy Adams talk about St Valentine’s Day — I’m not sure whether it’s romance or massacre he’s talking about.”

But like a beardy Mr Darcy, the Sinn Féin leader was not ready to give up. “It is a good day despite your rejection of my, er, my, my love,” he told the Taoiseach as Mr Kenny rolled his eyes and said, exasperated: “Spare me.”

LEO THE LUDICROUS

“I don’t think referendums are very democratic,” Mr Varadkar announced.

THAT’S WHERE THE MONEY WENT?

“One must ask whether these guys are number-crunching on crack at the moment,” TD Shane Ross’s take on how finance department officials get their growth forecasts.

SEANADFORNIA

David Norris breathlessly told the upper house about the “compulsive and repulsive” TV show Tallafornia. “The last episode was obnoxious. There was simulated sexual activity, leading, apparently, to full sexual activity. I am not entirely familiar on a habitual basis, even in my neck of the woods, with the language used.”

DOLE LOTTA SUN

“A lot of people go to Australia. It’s not being driven by unemployment at home, it’s driven by a desire to see another part of the world and live there” — Michael Noonan on forced emigration.

HE SAID/SHE SAID

Martin McGuinness: “As far as I was concerned she apologised for her behaviour [in the Prime Time presidential debate].” Miriam O’Callaghan: “I would never... have apologised for asking that question.”

ENDA GOES DOTTY IN DAVOS

Mr Kenny told business leaders the crash was caused by Irish people going “mad”.

F FOR FAIL

Labour TDs expressed anger that a “whitewash” review of the party’s patchy general election performance was delayed, then suppressed. “How long does it take to write the sentence: ‘We fucked up’?” one TD asked.

I’M WORTH IT

Enda Kenny spent €30,629 of taxpayers’ money on getting his photo taken in his first year in office.

JOAN’S WAIL OF DISTRESS

A tax shakedown of pensioners saw Socialist Joe Higgins note: “The Poor Clares could not have been more silent on the pensions controversy than the minister for social protection. I can imagine if Deputy Burton, had been in opposition, she would have brought an orchestra in to accompany her wails of distress for the pensioners who are being scarified by the Government.”

ISN’T XI LOVELY?

The English pronunciation of the name of the Chinese vice-president, who visited in February, is “she”. The Government’s craven refusal to bring up human rights with him was a case of: “Xi who must be obeyed.”

ENDA THE DRAGON: EXIT THE CONSCIENCE

Eamon Gilmore excelled in his prostration before Beijing with this jaw-droppingly crass comparison of human rights and trade. “No, we didn’t raise specific cases, any more than we raised specific trade investments.”

A STINK OVER INK

It wasn’t spent cartridges but ink cartridges that saw Sinn Féin caught in the crossfire. Dublin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh splashed out €50,000 of taxpayers’ money on ink cartridges in a two-year period, claiming they all went on leaflets pushed through his constituents’ doors — even though this would mean he delivered 3.2m pages to them. It appeared the party’s former slogan, “A ballot box in one hand, an Armalite in the other”, had been updated to “A letter box in one hand, an ink cartridge in the other”.

DEV DIG

FG Senator Tom Sheahan revelled in FF’s civil war over the fiscal treaty between Éamon Ó Cuív and Micheál Martin, noting: “Isn’t it ironic the way history repeats itself, because Deputy Martin isn’t the first Corkman to be shot in the back by a de Valera — and it happened 90 years ago.” Uproar forced Mr Sheahan to withdraw the remark. Kerry’s Ned O’Sullivan tried to restore calm, warning: “There are extreme leftists and lunatics everywhere.”

REGIME APOLOGIST

There was a standing ovation at the FF ard fheis for Micheál Martin’s catch-all, yet unspecific, apology for the mistakes of the last government — but delegates also rose to their feet to loudly cheer the man who presided over the country’s financial collapse and loss of sovereignty, Brian Cowen.

PINK AND PERKY

After FF backed gay marriage equality, members of its all-male Dáil party were asked: “So, is gay marriage compulsory in Fianna Fáil now? Will you have to take a husband?” To which the most intriguingly answer from a TD, who shall remain nameless, was: “I’ll marry him, but I won’t sleep with him.” It is the kind of compromise one would expect from the people who brought us “an Irish solution to an Irish problem”.

CANTONA KENNY

“Deputy Adams asking how many people will be off the dole next year is like asking how many seagulls flew over Phoenix Park in the past three weeks,” Mr Kenny mused.

MARRIAGE OF INCONVENIENCE

Enda reneged on his promise to issue ministerial score cards and insisted he and Gilmore had not lied about burning the bondholders, etc, as those were just election pledges and not in the Programme for Government. It was a bit like a newly married spouse who has been caught cheating, saying: “I know I promised to be faithful — but that was only during the wedding vows, when I needed you to say ‘yes’. If you look at the small print of the ‘Programme for Marriage’ I drafted immediately after the ceremony, I think you’ll find there’s a little clause saying: ‘I can cheat as much as I like’ — so, in fact, you owe me the apology, darling.”

ALL WHITE, ENDA?

A Kildare councillor who made global headlines by refusing to represent “black Africans” was allowed to remain a member of Fine Gael. Despite Darren Scully provoking international offence with his racist remarks, FG merely removed the whip, allowing him to remain a card-carrying Blueshirt after he apologised for making sweeping accusations that black people were aggressive.

A LOW LIFE IN HIGH OFFICE

The Mahon corruption probe finally delivered its damning verdict and ruled that Bertie Ahern’s evidence could not be believed.

Bertie, now exposed as a liar, has since gone to ground, unable to comprehend how the judges, whom he once branded lowlifes, could not believe his “explanations” for the dollar and sterling lodgements sloshing about the 23 bank accounts he operated while finance minister in the early 1990s. Oh, you remember them: “I won it on the gee gees”; “These men I didn’t really know made me take it in Manchester”; “It was from two spontaneous digouts a year apart from twoseparate sets of friends who had no knowledge of each other, but wanted to give the finance minister enough for a deposit on a little house.”

Bertie has yet to reveal where the money really did come from. What can he have to hide?

SEX AND THE FORBIDDEN CITY

Enda began his trip to China by comparing the skyline of Shanghai, whose inexorable rise means it is about to become the new New York and the real capital of capital, to the high-rise slums of Dublin’s Ballymun.

GILMORE’S DOWNER

Perhaps coming on stage to a song about dealing with a massive hangover and then referencing the Titanic after the Labour conference was hit by a protest riot was not the ideal opener for Eamon Gilmore keynote speech.

HOUSEHOLD CHARGE OF THE LIGHTWEIGHT BRIGADE

From Big Phil Hogan to Feck-It-Up Phil in the space of a couple of months, few ministerial careers have threatened to disappear down the drain so quickly.

TRICK OR TREATY?

It was not the Stability Treaty, it was the Stab Treaty — because all either side did was try to knife the other.

CHARDONNAY SOCIALISTS

The Socialists launched their anti-Treaty poster campaign in a slick little downtown Dublin wine bar. Wags wondered if Joe “No Ho-Ho” Higgins had confused the venue with a whine bar.

LUCINDA FRIGHTEN

In Fright Night on Lucinda Creighton St, If you dared vote no, loved ones who had fled abroad for work would be “marooned” there.

AND THEN THERE WERE THREE

Jerry Buttimer became Fine Gael’s first TD to come out, joining two Labour TDs.

SPINELESS SENATORS

“Would we really be wasting time consulting with the Catholic Church if they could discriminate against black people in this way?” Fianna Fáil Senator Averil Power was speaking after her bid to end the fear felt by gay teachers and medical staff who can be sacked for their sexual orientation was voted down by FG and Labour in a bid to stop FF claiming credit for the equality move.

CHAIRMAN ROW

The terms of a second humiliating troika bailout must be approved by Labour’s grassroots activists before the Government signs up to it, party chairman Colm Keaveney said. Such a move would almost certainly trigger a Labour exit from Government.

SHAMELESS

Sometimes it’s the only word to sum up the Dáil. And like the TV show of the same name, one shabby character symbolises the moral decay of all — Chatsworth Estate has Frank Gallagher, Leinster House has Mick Wallace.

MR ‘POOR ME’ GOT POORER

Mick Wallace is to use half the money taxpayers give him so he can pay off a bit of the money he defrauded from taxpayers.

His near-tear 10-minute address was short on self-awareness, but rich with self-pity after committing an illegal act by deliberately lying to the Revenue, leaving the State €2.1m down.

“Have I considered resigning and running in a by-election? Yes, I have. But I was never very good at quitting.” Maybe not, but you were bloody good at tax-dodging.

“The motive behind the underpayment was to delay payment in order to trade out of difficulty.” Oh right, so that’s why you doubled the salary you paid yourself and your son to €290,000, was it?

LITTLE MS POTTY MOUTH

“Fucking pig!” What Socialist TD, and close friend of Wallace, Clare Daly, reportedly shouted at mild-mannered photographer Sasko Lazarov after he snapped Wallace leaving the Dáil.

MAKE-UP FOREVER

As Enda emerged into the dawn light at 5.29am to announce the vague bank debt deal his make-up was immaculate, especially when compared to EU president José Manuel Barroso, who looked like Jordan at a hen party.

THE FLOWERPOT MEN

Mr Kenny nearly lost his footing and toppled over into a flower pot when he was unwilling to say where he stood on gay marriage. His accident-prone press secretary Feargal Purcell then made a complaint to TV3 that Enda had been subjected to “tantamount to assault” by a woman journalist. In reality the only assault was the one perpetuated by Enda on the nation’s intelligence.

SHARP

Mr Kenny accused journalists present at Flowerpotgate of “looking for a story”. My God Enda — you’re so right! If we let journalists look for stories, where will this madness all end? Gardaí looking for criminals? Doctors looking for sick people to treat?

LOOKS REILLY BAD

James Reilly owes his former business buddies a fortune — and still owes the rest of us an explanation over how he became the first sitting Cabinet minister to end up in that debtor sheet of shame, The Stubbs Gazette.

CLEVER LADY

“Fornication, I would say, is probably the single most likely cause of unwanted pregnancies,” TD Michelle Mulherin revealed.

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