Miriam Lord: Amateur dramatics let down by a bad script

A strange turn of events. Senator Marc Mac Sharry insisting he knows nothing. Everyone else convinced that he does. An unexpected departure from the norm there.

In the banking inquiry, as in the Seanad, it's usually the other way around.

It was a particularly daft day at the inquiry on Thursday, with two odd couples and a showboating Senator providing great light entertainment for all the wrong reasons.

The combination of witnesses was delicious.

First up, the Taoiseach and the man who tried to take his job. And for a follow-up, the Tánaiste and the man whose job she took away.

And into the middle of them blunders Marc Mac Sharry with some potentially wounding questions, only he was incapable of driving them home because he was too interested in putting on a performance.

The Senator from Sligo went to great lengths to create the impression he knows something about the Taoiseach’s relationship with one or more developers, insinuating that he has enjoyed their largesse in the form of luxury travel.

Amateur dramatics

With his flair for the amateur dramatic, Mac Sharry laid on the innuendo with the hammy hand of a spear-carrier lusting after the top billing.

Had Enda “ever accepted hospitality from a developer by way of transport, by road or air?”

He was ever so precise. But that’s where he stopped. It could have been by camel or elephant, glider or hot-air balloon, but Mac Sharry wouldn’t say.

We can only take him on his word, though, and presume he isn’t going to reveal all at some later date. That would be discourteous, at the very least, to the inquiry.

Maybe some bombshell of information might hit the newspapers to prove that he possesses strange powers of prophesy. But he told the inquiry that he wasn’t implying anything.

“I’m speculating on nuttin’,” he repeated, while harping on incessantly about a hypothetical journey undertaken by a party leader and underwritten by a property developer.

Joan Burton asked him to help her out. Did he have a specific example in mind? "I don't."

Mac Sharry’s antics were entertainingly annoying. But when he refused to put up, he should have shut up.

Instead, he seemed to think he was Jeremy Paxman and continued to baffle and badger in equal measures.

The Taoiseach and Richard Bruton, who was his finance spokesman when they were in opposition, enjoyed a relatively routine few hours in comparison to the mad session which followed.

Both men told how they did their best to stop the Fianna Fáil administration from leading the ship of state on to the rocks.

The Taoiseach tried to appear very relaxed and in control. When he took the oath, he waved the bible in a jaunty fashion and just about stopped himself giving the clerk a playful wallop with it at the end.

He waffled to his heart's content, but Sinn Féin's Pearse Doherty immediately threw him off course with some difficult questions, culminating with his dealings with Anglo Irish Bank at the time of the bank guarantee.

There are emails from that time between senior executives, outlining how the then opposition leader told one of them by telephone of rumours that the bank was about to be brought under the guarantee.

Knew nothing

Enda knew nothing about that. He did ring the man in question, but only because he knew he was a “younger person” from Castlebar and he was acquainted with his brother, who asked him to give the young lad a ring about something.

It was nothing of substance, though. As for the young lad, Matt Moran, he was only the chief financial officer of Anglo.

The Taoiseach was clearly uncomfortable. And so to Mac Sharry, who had been glaring menacingly at the Taoiseach before he got going.

Did developers “give you lifts?” Did they “bring you on planes?”

Enda was very vague. Define a developer, he asked. Define what constitutes a lift.

In the end, he committed himself to “I have never been in the business of looking for hospitality or transport from people, by air or by road”.

They might have offered though, and it might have been rude to refuse.

And so to Joan and Pat. There wouldn’t be a repeat of the previous day’s Lissadell love-in with these two. It was a relief when they didn’t bash each other over the head with their bibles.

On the floor

When they sat down, Pat leaned away from Joan to such a degree that he was almost on the floor.

Joan started as she meant to go on. And on. And on. Joan’s first reply to Fianna Fáil’s Michael McGrath lasted a full seven minutes. And that’s only because he interrupted her.

“The questions are not being answered. They are not being answered and I’m sick of it!” he cried.

Rabbitte folded his arms and looked at the floor. You could see Rabbitte – who, when he got the chance, was giving the thoughtful, frank answers of a man who won’t be running for office again – getting restless.

Marc continued on his transports of the air and road variety. What would Joan and Pat do if, say, leaders of other party’s accepted free lifts or flights? Would it bother them?

They didn’t want to speculate without a concrete example. Mac Sharry had none.

Had Pat been on any trips?

He mentioned a builder friend with whom he went to football matches. He is a small builder, but Pat wasn’t so sure how good he is at the job.

“His father was the small builder, and I notice sometimes, Senator, that talent skips a generation.”

Ouch! You could see it hurt. Marc is the scion of Fianna Fáil grandee, former minister and commissioner Ray Mac Sharry. He tried to make a joke out of it, but you could see he was winded. A low blow, but he had it coming to him.

Mac Sharry would have fared far better had he asked his questions without the excruciating, face-pulling, barking theatrics. As it was, Rabbitte nearly got himself a standing ovation.