A nearly taoiseach, but still a magnet
Young, restless and desperate for their latest photo-fix, Enda’s 20 new enfant TDs jostled anxiously for position ready to swirl around Mr Kenny as the cameras rolled.
For passing Labourites in the now tattered-looking “alliance for change” with Fine Gael, it was a sobering moment as they saw the final proof that the alliance had done little for them but change some of their seats into FG ones.
With the resurgent FG parliamentary party corralled in behind police tape-style barriers to keep the dozen or so photographers back, it momentarily resembled an identity parade line-up on Crimecall. All it needed was the victim, a certain Mr Pat Rabbitte, to walk past saying “He stole our seat, so did he, so did he...”
But instead there appeared onto the sun-dappled plinth Enda, the backbench extender, as his young proteges sloshed over him like sugar on a doughnut.
Party handlers feared for the nearly taoiseach’s safety as one shouted: “Everybody take three steps back.” but Enda was now, perhaps for the first time in his life, a human magnet.
Perhaps the lack of oxygen caused by the dizzying crowd led Mr Kenny to repeat his slightly delusional mantra he could still form the next government.
Maybe because he was emboldened by his “crew”, or maybe because he now has no more votes to lose, Enda felt tough enough to do what he failed to do during the campaign and stick the knife into Bertie Ahern over the tribunals.
He laid into the Greens and the PDs for even considering propping up Bertie after they had been the loudest critics of the Taoiseach’s Mahon entanglements during the election. Both parties may well have words to eat, but at least they were not too timid to say something in the first place.
Though a sporty addition to the new intake, Cork South West’s PJ Sheehan, 74, did not quite fit the ninja teenage image as he squeezed next to 27-year-old Lucinda Creighton who had personally dynamited Michael McDowell out of Dublin South East.
Dubbed “Blonde Ambition” due to her attention-getting determination, some in the press corps had hoped she would live up to her reputation by sky diving onto the plinth, and were somewhat disappointed by her more modest arrival.
But lucky Enda managed to get a Lotto winner in the picture as Tipp North newcomer Noel Coonan showed off his syndicate ticket.
With that, the furtive 50 FG TDs milled around Mr Kenny’s back, perhaps eyeing it for target practice in two years’ time if this ambitious intake decide a nearly taoiseach is no longer good enough for them.
