Willie stay or Willie go takes low road out

NOT for the first time there were two faces of Willie O’Dea on display yesterday – but which would survive the night, Willie Stay or Willie Go?

Willie Stay began the day with the upper hand, but then Willie Go started shooting his mouth off again and his fate was sealed.

Willie announced he’d been the real victim in Tapegate – never mind the sitting Defence Minister had dripped poison into the ear of a Limerick journalist, insisting a political rival was running a brothel – a totally untrue statement intended to warp the democratic process – Mr O’Dea was the injured party in all this. Why could no one feel his pain?

“Is the brothel still closed?” he whispered mendaciously to the bemused reporter, adding for good measure it was on Clancy Strand and home to “ladies of the night”.

How ironic his false accusation merely heaped more damage onto the image of that real house of ill repute on Kildare Street – the Leinster House of ill repute. The same House in which hours earlier a haughty Taoiseach had heaped praise on the moral up-standing of Mr O’Dea and dismissed opposition demands for his resignation, damning them for taking the “low road to high office”. Well, now we can see exactly where that low road runs – it forks off Clancy Strand and is better known as the Fianna Fáil freeway to power.

That grip on power loosened markedly yesterday as the Government teetered on the brink of collapse due to ill-discipline and slap-stick scenes surrounding a crucial Finance Bill vote – and the Greens teetered on the brink of finally growing a backbone as they realised Mr O’Dea’s remaining in the Cabinet would do for what is left of their lingering credibility what his brothel smear had been intended to do to his Sinn Féin rival.

Lone Senator Dan Boyle emerged as the Twitter hitman, his political tweet assassinating a political twit.

Willie had blamed the journalist, the opposition, and he’d even tried to blame the gardaí, but in the end there was no one left to blame but himself.