The past deeds of parties across the floor of the House make moralising a tad difficult, writes MIRIAM LORD
PERHAPS MICHAEL and Denis should lay off the expensive lawyers and PR stormtroopers.
If Moriarty really is the villain of the piece, only one man can help them now. Quick. Send for Sherlock Holmes (but in the interests of health and safety, keep him away from the Reichenbach Falls.) It was all go in Leinster House yesterday as the fallout from the Moriarty report continued.
Then it emerged that Michael Lowry was holed up in a bedroom in the Davenport Hotel and offering “one on ones” to allcomers in the media.
To cap it all, Luke “Ming” Flanagan chose a Denis O’Brien organ – Today FM – to announce that he is giving up the gange, as he might say. That’s something you don’t hear every day around the tranquil corridors of power.
Instead, he’ll be acquainting himself with a different sort of dope around Leinster House.
To ease himself into this new experience, Ming should pay a visit to the Seanad when it resumes. At the very least, he should be guaranteed a legal low, particularly as Micheál Martin’s attempts to expunge his party’s old codgers from the Upper House seem doomed to failure.
In the Dáil, Gerry Adams was transfixed by the old story of O’Brien’s wandering cheque for $50,000 and Fine Gael’s curious attempts to conceal its parentage before sending it back.
“It reads like a novel,” declared the Sinn Féin leader, no stranger to thrillers himself.
Indeed, the saga of this nobody’s child of a cheque is a mortifyingly fishy one for Fine Gael, now that it has entered the squeaky clean Enda era.
Gerry sought to drive this point home. However, in the process, he also gave us an insight into why he wears a beard: it’s because he has a tendency to lead with his chin.
The episode of the 1995 donation attempt struck Adams as most bizarre and he wanted answers. “Can the Taoiseach explain how any of this, in terms of offshore accounts, invoices, money-laundering of a very classical kind?”
(As any aficionado will attest, you have your classic money- laundering, and then you have your more avant-garde type of money laundering, and then you have the burn-it-in-the-bin-in-the- back-garden money laundering.) Cue widespread hilarity.
Sinn Féin deputies sat stoney-faced.
“You’d know a great deal more about that than would anybody on this side of the house,” spluttered Alan Shatter, the Minister for Justice who is settling nicely into Dermot Ahern’s bovver-boots.
The Fianna Fáil leader was insulted on Gerry’s behalf. “This is not an issue for laughter,” Micheál sniffed. It’s just as well he didn’t see some of his own deputies, giggling away.
Gerry demanded an immediate debate. “Tiochfaidh do lá,” replied Enda, explaining that Adams would have his day next week, with the agreement of the whips.
Furthermore, continued the Taoiseach, warming to his task, he would allow statements followed by questions. Ask him anything – he wasn’t bothered. He wouldn’t behave like Fianna Fáil did after the first Moriarty report into the activities of Charles Haughey was published. That report came out in December 2006 and statements in the House weren’t heard until the following February and no questions were entertained.
“What’s the difference?” harrumphed Gerry, who seems determined to remain in a permanent state of affront.
In that respect, he is joined by Micheál Martin, who is also getting peppered with the buckshot of his party’s past whenever he tries the moral outrage approach with Enda.
Even Gerry agreed with the Taoiseach’s assessment of Fianna Fáil. He told Enda that both parties were as bad as each other.
But Micheál Martin has to soldier on. Fresh from over a decade in a government that posted a “do not disturb” sign on the door with each fresh controversy, said he found the contents of the report “deeply disturbing”.
Easy pickings for the Taoiseach. “From my point of view, I want to see that the right thing is done. No leader of the Fine Gael Party ever pocketed the proceeds from whip-arounds at dinners.”
Later, he got in a dig about the previous government’s association with Michael Lowry. “When we speak about accountability, the Fianna Fáil party would not even go so far as to publish the secret agreement it had with Deputy Lowry to stay in power.”
Kenny is blessed with his two main Opposition parties. Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin are like a Ryanair dream – tonnes of extra baggage to exploit.
The Taoiseach fixed Micheál and Gerry with a look which said: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Whereupon the Independent deputy Shane Ross got to his feet. The patchwork of Independents – it’s early days but they are managing to combine their talents well at the moment – is the only Opposition grouping which can face the Government down without inviting withering scorn about their past exploits.
“I have some sympathy with the Taoiseach when he receives abuse for the transgressions on the spoils of war from the quarters from which he has received it today. I find it difficult to take because I see those who are accusing him as being equally guilty of things of which they are now accusing the Taoiseach.”
Now was Enda’s chance to attone for culture of cronyism which has afflicted Irish politics for the last 14 years. He urged him to make a start by reversing the appointments to State boards made by Fianna Fáil in the dying days of their administration.
“I commend Deputy Ross on his comments” said Enda, cementing Shane’s position as the Independents’ rudder of the right.
The Moriarty debate will continue next week, but in the Davenport, Michael Lowry was breaking his silence.
Speaking from his boudoir – “there were one-on-one sessions and a few threesomes”, explained one hack upon his return – Lowry told how he was the victim of one judge’s opinion.
He is considering his legal options and appeared to have retained the services of that august legal firm, Messrs Sickened, Saddened and Smeared. Denis O’Brien has engaged their services too.