Buddies blather over cozy with Sarkozy

It was Buddy Hell in the Dáil.

Gerry Adams dismissed the “buddy-buddy” antics as the mark of an “amadán” — though the Sinn Féiner’s own faltering schoolboy Irish made you wonder who was the real fool.

Joe Higgins went further and suggested the Taoiseach had been passed around the Brussels conference room like a tray of biscuits as all of the EU leaders got the chance to patronise him in turn for being the poster boy of pointless austerity.

Enda tried to come over all macho about his French affair, suggesting it was more a “left hook” than a “pat on the head” from the president — but unfortunately for Mr Kenny, the pictures tell a different story as the Taoiseach appears to flop and fawn like the most besotted Justin Bieber fan in the face of his idol.

Though he does not usually allude to Mr Adams’s, shall we say, troubled past in The Troubles — when you accuse Enda of being too pally with a Frenchman he opens fire with both barrels and suddenly goes for the jugular.

“You sir,” he hissed in the manner of a Victorian squire giving a good horse-whipping to a ruffian on the steps of his gentlemen’s club, “have never owned up to some of the shadowy creatures you were ‘buddy buddy’ over the past 30 years.

“When I am asked in Armagh to apologise on behalf of this State for people who were murdered in Northern Ireland by people who crossed the border and were deemed to be in safe houses, I have to say that the organisation involved was the enemy of this State because they murdered gardaí, army personnel and innocent civilians.

“For the ‘buddy buddies’ of that group who Deputy Adams knows and with whom he associated, the truth will come out some time.”

Adams returned blows insisting Fine Gael had opposed the peace process, before adding rather limply: “It is inappropriate for a Taoiseach to act like an eejit when he meets the French president.”

Not that there were many people around to hear the angry exchange, because despite Leader’s Questions being the centrepiece of the Dáil week, barely one in 10 TDs bothered hauling their well-paid bottoms into the chamber for it.

The Labour Party did not turn up at all — interesting to see that Labour’s influence in the chamber looked exactly the same as it appears to be in the “Coalition’s” economic and social policy, ie non-existent.

The Greens used to get so demoralised and irrelevant they couldn’t take the shame of turning up for Leaders Question’s either in an administration within which they became increasingly powerless, but it’s a tad early for Labour to throw in the towel in the same way, surely?

Their absence was noted as further proof of the Blueshirt dominance of the Dáil as the so-called opposition once again failed to live up to that title with Fianna Fáil’s very own Mr Slippery, Micheál Martin, once again performing one of his extraordinary policy somersaults and suddenly insisting on a referendum on EU fiscal union even if the Attorney General ruled it was unnecessary — despite his party having the completely contrary view a matter of two days ago.

And as for Adams, well, his intervention just sounded like a bad rendition of: ‘Buddy, Can You Spare Me A Whine’.