Miriam Lord: Adams gets in two digs for the price of one

There is a new pecking order in Government now.

This has given certain people notions.

So where stands Fine Gael in the rankings? "Piddling about with Fianna Fáil, " according to Gerry Adams, but only until such time as Fianna Fáil decides to piddle down on Fine Gael.

He cautioned Enda Kenny to be wary of the party supporting his minority Government. It won’t end well, he reckons.

The Taoiseach shouldn’t be wasting his time trying to butter up Micheál Martin and his crew.

Instead, says Adams, it would be better for everyone if he engaged with all sides of the House in tackling major issues “instead of piddling about with Fianna Fáil and doing little side deals to remain as Taoiseach”.

This was a BOGOF attack from Gerry – a buy one, get one free promotion, where he used his time at Leaders’ Questions to have a go at both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

So he informed the Taoiseach that his Government is a mess and then criticised the main Opposition party for acting as a willing partner in the endeavour. Fianna Fáil is only stringing him along, contended the Sinn Féin leader. Micheál Martin is only after the one thing.

“None of this is in the common good,” quivered Gerry. Fianna Fáil will stick around “until it decides to pull the plug at the point most advantageous to itself and its ambition to form a government”.

Paddling around the possibility of pulling the piddling plug brought Adams smartly to Irish Water, and the new expert commission established to divert the flow of complaints about water charges into a procedural culvert.

He said the body was set up to give Fianna Fáil “a fig-leaf” to dodge their election promise to scrap the charges.

“You bought into that,” he admonished Enda, who gave Fianna Fáil their commission only for them to respond by demanding the head of his commission chairman.

Melodramatic turn

Matters then took a melodramatic turn in Gerry’s particular head.

“Now, Fianna Fáil were centrally involved in the rise and fall of Joe O’Toole,” he revealed, as if spilling the plot of a paperback thriller.

“And Taoiseach, you’re long enough around. You know they’ll do exactly the same thing to you when it suits them.”

Whatever about Enda Kenny, Gerry Adams is certainly long enough around to know what happens when a movement becomes centrally involved in the rise and fall of dispensable somebodies.

Adams suggested an escape route for the Taoiseach if he doesn’t want to be disappeared by Fianna Fáil.

He should get rid of the commission and have a Dáil vote on water charges.

“Or, in keeping with the fiction of new politics, do you have to ask an Teachta Martin for permission to do that?” he wondered sarcastically.

Whereupon a voice piped up gleefully from the vicinity of the Government benches.

“No. He asks us!”

Senior partners

For it was Junior Minister Finian McGrath, delighting his senior partners with a reminder of his group’s decision to defy the Taoiseach and disregard Cabinet collective responsibility in today’s vote on Mick Wallace’s fatal foetal abnormalities Bill.

That decision has angered many in Fine Gael. They feel that the Independent Alliance trio of McGrath, John Halligan and senior minister Shane Ross have taken unacceptable liberties with Cabinet rules.

“Ross is giving us the two fingers and getting away with it. He’s making eejits out of us,” said one backbencher.

But what’s a taoiseach to do? Enda Kenny has looked worn out and preoccupied for the last while. He’s had a terrible few weeks. He appears worried. Some of his TDs are most definitely worried.

Last night at the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting, there were rumblings of discontent against his leadership and about the behaviour of Shane Ross and co.

In response to Adams’s cribbing about his performance, the Taoiseach wearily explained: “This is a partnership Government. This party that I lead does not have a majority and we have to rely on and co-operate with all the members of the House and the different groupings and parties, including Deputy Adams’s party.”

And up pipes Finian McGrath again, with a big grin on his face.

“And Shane Ross too!”

Talk about rubbing it in.