Biffo the beast finally rouses

LIKE a lion that has just feasted on an antelope, Brian Cowen cast a lazy eye across the sleepy savannah that was the Dáil chamber yesterday morning.

Recruited in to take Mary Harney's place for the Order of Business, Biffo was simply not in the mood for biffing anybody. His greatest effort during the 20 minutes or so of a wholly pedestrian slot was to find as comfortable a reclining position as he could on the benches.

For most of the time he remained more or less a spectator, looking benignly on as Pat Rabbitte and the the Labour front bench had their daily clash with Ceann Comhairle Ruairi O'Hanlon over whether or not their questions were in order.

The purpose of the Order of Business is to ask the Government's top cat in the house about proposed legislation. Of course, opposition TDs will opportunistically sly in sneaky questions over the Government's latest embarrassments to score points.

Cowen sat back and kind of purred through all these exchanges, with a look of complete indifference on his face.

For the purposes of research, the Irish Examiner did a quick word scan of Cowen's contributions during the 20 minutes. It came to about 300 words, which is about one minutes of talk time. Our favourite was this example of peerless oratory: "The answer to the first question is no."

Not so much stonewalling, as reinforced concreting. Glorious.

But then in the afternoon, the beast finally roused. The Finance Minister fronted a press conference to publicise the party's Árd Fheis this weekend.

And Biffo was clearly back on the prowl. He spent 20 minutes mauling Fine Gael and Labour for daring to try and maul Fianna Fáil by stealth.

Unsportingly, Cowen said, the opposition parties slag off the Government without having the decency to come up with any real policies of their own.

"We want to see a bit of meat," he growled when speaking of FG/Lab policies presumably to allow him devour them.

But Labour and Fine Gael aren't going to take that bait easily. Hungry as Biffo looked for the fray, it's going to be a long while yet before there's any Rabbitte thrown into this beast's cage.