Enda may be chicken but Bertie’s just fowl

THE dying days of the 30th Dáil have been dominated by sex, tears and chickens.

The phoney election war reached a new low as Labour rustled up a rather manky looking chicken suit and made one of their supporters run around Leinster House in it to showcase the fact Enda Kenny is running scared of a TV debate.

Clever stuff — it’s great to see the impressive battle of ideas that is political discourse commence in such highbrow fashion.

The Green’s Mary White shook up the debate about the debate further by suggesting a women-only debate was needed.

Now, considering that neither her own party, nor any other, apart from the long-dead Progressive Democrats, has ever bothered electing a woman leader this may prove tricky as well as smacking of tokenism.

Throw into the mix the keenness of Sky TV to get in on the act and all this could go horribly wrong.

Imagine if one of their Andy Gray gender-issue dinosaur types had to stand in as moderator at the last minute and his first question to Ms White, Joan Burton, Mary Coughlan, etc was: “Right, do any of you birds know what the offside rule is?”

It really doesn’t bear thinking about, but one thing that has been exercising people’s minds is Mary O’Rourke’s stream of consciousness swansong speech to the Dáil which is still bouncing off the walls of Leinster House — and off the wall is the kindest way of describing it.

Clearly concerned over remarks by a female political columnist that the Dáil, like sex, is best left to the young, Ms O’Rourke used the Finance Bill debate to muse: “As somebody who is much older than her, I hope her sex urge lasts until she is older. It would be too bad if there came an age when she would be told that she had to stop. My goodness, we would be living in a gestapo country in that case,” she announced to baffled fellow deputies.

And just like the matriarch of the Dáil Ms O’Rourke, the Big Daddy of the Bust, Bertie Ahern, was letting his mouth run away with him as well.

Last seen hiding in a kitchen cupboard next to a packet of Hobnobs in order to advertise a Sunday tabloid, Mr Ahern made one of his rare visits to the Dáil of which he is supposed to still be a member.

Did he use the trip to ask forgiveness for his government’s fuelling of the bust as Michael Martin had? Did he come to the chamber to offer his profound apologies to the victims of the slump?

No, he came to dismiss them instead by casually badmouthing a councillor who cornered him at the gates and told him he should be ashamed over the pay cuts and tax hikes those still in work were taking.

It was the moment Mr Bust was well and truly busted.

And Labour’s Mr Chicken is set to follow Mr Kenny for the duration of the campaign, but poor old Enda has no one to blame for the ridicule but himself.

After being put out of sight for the best part of the last two months by party handlers so that he doesn’t frighten away voters, the moment Enda is released back into the community he makes a hash of things.

All he had to say was that TV debates are great and we’ll sort out the technicalities later, instead he ruled out Mr Martin’s offer of a three-way format with him and Eamon Gilmore completely.

Enda’s insistence it would be fairer to have a five-way instead with the SF and Green leaders as well is certainly more egalitarian, but the way he has handled the issue makes him look like he’s ducking the more rigorous and in-depth challenge of a three-way.

Some retiring TDs admitted they shed a tear at the thought of leaving Leinster House for good.

But the cry from the people as the 30th Dáil wraps is surely that while Enda may be a chicken, Bertie’s just fowl.