Pyjama-drama: TDs in work shocker

IT was a pyjama-nama drama as not a mouse stirred throughout Leinster House.

Deputies hadn’t slept you see as the dawn broke over the Oireachtas to reveal something that would truly shock us — TDs working.

How they loved the attention drawn by their little mini-marathon legislative largesse, all done to grease the greedy bankers and developers back to the good times as the taxpayers once more prepared to take the hit.

The sound of self-congratulatory politicos was only surpassed by the sound of champagne cork popping spivs who’d just won the €54bn NAMA lottery.

Just why TDs had decided to “valiantly” stay up until 5.30am to get the NAMA Bill through its committee stage remains a mystery — though not so great a mystery as why no legal action has yet been brought in connection with anything arising form the financial irregularities at sleaze-splattered Anglo Irish Bank.

Anglo will now get a cool €28bn pumped into it — €28bn that will do nothing to help NAMA’s supposed aim of freeing up capital so banks can lend again to small and medium firms going to the wall on a daily basis because they can’t get credit.

Anglo is a deeply dysfunctional bank, loved by the big bad debt developers for its easy terms and friendly service — if you were part of the charmed golden circle, of course. It won’t be passing on any of those billions to small business. Because, despite Anglo being underwritten by the taxpayer and now in nationalised hands, the loot will go to save the plutocrats and fat cats who got us all into this stinking mess in the first place.

The Fianna Fáil and Green TDs thought they had done their national duty — opposition deputies thought the nation had been done. But all agreed what a jolly huge sacrifice they had made by staying up all night to see it through.

Yet in any functioning parliament, staying up late to get the job done is the norm, not the exception.

Why couldn’t the TDs have given up their Friday off to debate the 250 amendments properly, rather than play the sleep-deprived martyr?

It is not as if they need the rest, as our part-time parliament sits for barely 90 days a year, while, for example, the much maligned members of Westminster turn up for 160 days.

One TD spoke about his heroic bedding down in the Leinster House corridor — maybe that will give him a bit more insight into the plight of the tens of thousands of people who can’t pay their mortgages this month and face the looming prospect of repossession and sleeping on the streets. NAMA will do nothing for them.

Still, the all-nighter now means that the goblins of greed can snooze soundly in their beds once more.