Father of the Dáil’s ‘facts of life’ talk was just sweet nothings

AS Father of the Dáil, thanks to being its longest serving TD, Enda Kenny knew this awkward moment would always come — he finally had to explain what he dubbed “the facts of life” to his innocent charges.

The bolder boys on the Fianna Fáil benches giggled nervously at the prospect — now being an openly same-sex parliamentary party, they wondered if the “tell it like it is” Taoiseach would share his big revelation with them as well.

Bombastic Independent TD Shane Ross, who routinely mistakes shouting for substance, had unexpectedly forced Mr Kenny into the position of outlining the big bad ways of the world to the Dáil.

Mr Kenny insisted it was time Mr Ross and the other deputies learned the shocking truth about the facts of life in a terse response to being accused of reneging on Fine Gael’s election promise to burn the bold-holders after performing an embarrassing U-turn under pressure from Brussels regarding pumping an extra €24bn into the banks, rather than the “not one more cent without burden-sharing” alternative the party stated in opposition.

The chamber hushed, some deputies perched forward, eager to hear what Mr Kenny meant by “the facts of life” — a tingle of excruciating excitement rippled through the air — but, not unlike many fathers before him, Enda bottled it and lapsed into a round-the- houses analogy intended to get him out of a tight corner without actually shedding much light on anything at all.

If the Taoiseach had really wanted to impart the facts of life regarding the background to his government’s humiliating early loss of authority after being slapped down by Brussels, he would have said something like this.

“The facts of life are that when a politician really, really, loves the idea of winning an election and being in power, he will whisper sweet nothings into the ear of a voter and plant a seed in the voter’s head that will grow and grow until the voter, heavy with anticipation, decides to give that politician their special ‘X’ in the blissful privacy of a polling booth — and then, not long after, a new government will be born.”

The real facts of life are that Enda and Labour’s Eamon Gilmore stand exposed as political playboys who must have known the seed they planted in the electorate’s mind during the campaign, that we could get some national sovereignty and solvency back by burning the bondholders, really was whispering a “sweet nothing”.

Either they knew Brussels would never go along with it — which makes them little better than liars.

Or they didn’t understand how the EU works — which makes them incompetent and unready for government.

Whichever option is closer to the truth, the upshot is that — yet again — we all got screwed by the bankers.