Desperado O’Dea on the ropes in Dáil duel

SO CONCERNED was the Government about feuds in Limerick last year that it sent down John Fitzgerald to sort it all out.

Well it seems that the former Dublin city manager still has his work cut out following the extraordinary altercation in South’s pub last weekend, involving the Wyatt Earp of Irish politics, Defence Minister Willie O’Dea.

Yesterday O’Dea came out fighting (meta-phorically of course) after being accused of being more belligerent than a Jack Russell defending its territory during his spat with two local people last Saturday night.

The Minister for Defence took exception to a whole host of claims yesterday. He denied he used the ‘P’ word when politely inquiring of the identity of someone involved in the argument (as in “Who is that p***k?”).

He also denied inviting the same man to step outside as he would like to hit him. He said yesterday that he would never do that, especially as the man in question was over 6ft 5in.

But what seemed to upset Willie most was the utterly outrageous and reprehensible claim that he was “working the tables” in the pub, currying favour and support from constituents.

Quickly reminding us that he got 19,000 votes in the last election (which makes him either amazingly popular or a megalomaniac), he sniffily suggested he did not need to work tables. Besides, the pub was too crowded as it was a Saturday night, he said.

And it also seemed he had learnt two of Bertie’s Cardinal Rules that Ahern drew up to defend his reputation.

First of all, there was the expression of regret that expressed no regret whatsoever, just bitterness.

Did he regret anything?

No, he said, before adding that the only thing he regretted was getting involved in the argument with them at all.

And then there was the Second Cardinal Rule of Bertie, the scatter-gun defence and the use of multiple clarifications.

First of all, he said that he had used a phrase no stronger than “get lost” to John Fahey and Geraldine Morrissey.

Yesterday he told Pat Kenny on RTÉ Radio that he may have said any one of the following: “Get lost, sod off or feck off.”

Sure Father Ted popularised ‘feck’ but it still ain’t parliamentary lingo, is it?

It was inevitable that this particular Gunfight at the OK Corral would win the mustachioed minister desperado status in the Dáil yesterday morning.

During order of business, Enda Kenny mocked the “fighting face” of Willie O’Dea on the front page of yesterday’s Irish Examiner and referred to “bare knuckle” fighting. Ceann Comhairle, John O’Donoghue, himself a man not averse to ferocious verbal hand-to-hand combat warned him that there would be no reruns of Rocky V in the chamber.

Tánaiste Brian Cowen, another verbal bruiser, refused to rise to the bait, though he himself had been drinking in that very pub with O’Dea earlier that night. He blanked all questions that came his way.

Still, thank God Michael D Higgins was around to sum up: “Willie O’Dea, my fight for Irish Freedom,” he mused.