Bertie puts boot into Beverly in record time

GONE in 66 minutes.

That was all the time it took for the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party to show the red card to Beverly Flynn last night.

Practice makes perfect and as this is the third time Ms Flynn has lost the party whip, perhaps its no surprise the procedure can now be executed so swiftly.

White smoke emerged from the meeting at 7:06 pm, after it got going at 6pm.

The start of the meeting was delayed by half-an-hour by the unmannerly opposition parties calling votes in the chamber of Dáil Éireann.

Just three minutes into her address, Ms Flynn was halted in her tracks as the pesky opposition called a quorum in the parliament chamber requiring a number of her colleagues to leave the action in the packed Fianna Fáil meeting room on the fifth floor of Leinster House to head downstairs.

During the break, Ms Flynn was left to awkwardly sit down beside the Taoiseach and exchange small talk - chit-chat, you might say.

At that stage though the game was up, as any hope she had of a dramatic rescue was sunk by Mr Ahern’s direct appraisal on why the decision of judgments Supreme Court and the High Court could not be ignored.

“He just laid it on the line and that was it. On occasions, he has been known to be less than straight but he was very direct and to the point,” a TD said after the meeting.

Suggesting Ms Flynn should have resigned rather than putting the parliamentary party through the pain, Mr Ahern pulled no punches, according to another deputy.

“Yer man did a fair hatchet job. It didn’t paint a pretty picture. He said the parliamentary party and the Government could not run away from the judgment,” he said.

Nonetheless, with the odds being loaded against her, Ms Flynn put up a robust defence as she consistently protested her innocence to the accusations that she assisted NIB bank customers to evade tax.

Drawing upon a quotation from John F Kennedy, she also referred to her family’s tradition in Fianna Fáil, with her grandfather being a founding member of the party in Mayo, and the long career of her legendary father, Pádraig Flynn.

The 37-year-old argued that she felt she had got the greatest harassment of any TD, but took it on the basis of being a Flynn and as a former banker.

Her speech received mixed reviews as a party colleague described it as a dismal performance where her claims of innocence didn’t wash while another said it was admirable in the circumstances.

“She is a very able speaker and put up a good case in an impossible position,” a Fianna Fáil TD said.

Despite her colleagues unanimously deciding to give her the boot, with nobody standing on her side, Ms Flynn kept her head held high.

“Beverly Cooper-Flynn never looks dejected. She is always proud of her family and being of the great people of Mayo. If you could bottle it you’d sell it,” according to one FF TD.

To outsiders it may seem strange that absolutely nobody came to her side or even spoke up to express sympathy with her cause, but one TD said that he wasn’t surprised.

“Certainly nobody jumped to her defence high up or low down. It was pretty merciless. Nobody had actually said there was going to be any rumpus,” the TD said.

Yet FF insiders felt last night that Mr Ahern will have to put in an equally convincing performance on Friday night at the Fianna Fáil Ard Comhairle’s meeting, when he seeks her expulsion from the party.

“She will have support there, particularly from the west of Ireland, and there will be a big row. Bertie really put the boot in tonight and for all the protestations of innocence, the reality she was found by two courts to be involved,” another TD said.