Cabinet comedy circus is back in town

PENSIONERS in revolt over rough treatment, education cuts protesters besieging Leinster House and ministers dismissing talk of an IMF bailout as “ludicrous” — sadly, the first day of the Dáil felt just like any of its last 500 days.

Same old circus, brand new clowns.

But that’s unfair, isn’t it? Unfair to trainee clowns I mean — because this lot have been in power for nearly a year now and should really have graduated from all that knock-about stuff.

But there Micheal Noonan and Enda Kenny were, carrying on with the same, lame, slapstick routine nonetheless.

Using words eerily reminiscent of the Fianna Fiasco government, the Finance Minister claimed we were “fully funded” until the end of next year, insisting talk of another bailout was unthinkable. So that’s another bailout sorted then.

While Enda denied he had any idea Revenue was going to shake down panicked pensioners who owed nothing in back taxes, even though he had already spent the €45 million in used €20s the scare tactic was intended to trawl in as he tries to scramble together the €1.25 billion he’s going to hand over to Anglo bondholders next month as they laugh all the way to their bank — a bank Independent TD Stephen Donnelly dubbed a “dead, criminal organisation”.

As funny as the cabinet denials were, it was left to the Socialist stand-up Joe “Ho Ho” Higgins to really bring the House down with a deliciously cutting quip about Joan Burton.

“The Poor Clares could not have been more silent on the pensions controversy than the Minister for Social Protection. I can imagine if the minister, Deputy Burton, had been in opposition, she would have brought an orchestra in to accompany her wails of distress for the pensioners who are being scarified by the Government,” he said with a whiplash smile as the chamber erupted all around him.

Joan — and her wrath — were absent, so none laughed more heartily than the Labour benches, with Energy Minister Pat Rabbitte finding it particularly difficult to stifle his guffaws on the front bench.

But Mr Higgins lamented that ministers like Ms Burton were merely just puppets anyway, being operated by a troika which was pulling all the invisible strings in the push for punishing austerity at all costs.

Though it is strange that for three men so obsessed about the need to scrimp and save every penny, the troika boys love nothing better than spending their 10 days in Dublin encased in Robbie Williams’s favourite haunt, The Merrion.

There, even a “standard” room will set you back €500 a night and the penthouse is a snip at just €3,000. But then, they won’t really be forking out for it as the Irish taxpayer is always on hand to foot the bill via the grasping interest rates the EU stuck on those bailout loans.

And while the puppets were going through the pantomime of pretending parliament was still in control upstairs, the Simpsons was playing out in a committee room downstairs, as the head of the Revenue, Josephine Feehily, was questioned about frightening all those little old ladies who did not actually owe anyone a penny.

Fianna Fáil TD Timmy Dooley suggested it may have been the Revenue’s otherwise laudable attention to detail and state-of-the-art IT systems that had landed it in all this trouble, to which the agency’s chairwoman replied: “Homer nods,” in a bizarre reference to the yellow-faced fellow from Springfield.

It must be like living in a non-stop comedy festival working down at the Revenue.

But there was no such revelry at the gates of Leinster House as children from schools in disadvantaged and rural areas pleaded for a Labour education minister to reverse plans to cut 400 teaching posts from their classrooms. Faced with a backbench rebellion on the issue, Ruairi Quinn has suddenly commissioned a report to find out what effect such cuts would have in schools previously earmarked for special attention due to how far behind of the rest of the system they were.

The investigation will take four weeks, but Mr Quinn’s query could be answered in four seconds by anyone with a brain: “Already disadvantaged children will be disadvantaged even more, Ruairi.”

But it is not all bad news. While disadvantaged schools may be hit hard under this Government, the performance of Cabinet ministers yesterday showed that clown school has never been so successful.