Backbench pups scorn dogged approach of Opposition leaders

DÁIL SKETCH:IT'S AN appalling vista. Fourteen weeks and the pups are beginning to emerge from the pack. When a government has an uneasy majority, this tends to keep its deputies in check. It also means that there are enough jobs on offer to prevent boredom from setting in.

But Enda Kenny’s administration enjoys a massive majority and, as the novelty of power fades, his deputies are beginning to enjoy it more and more. Hence the increasing noise levels during Leaders’ Questions.

A worrying early development in this regard is that the Taoiseach appears to be leading from the front.

When Enda looks across the chamber, he sees a small group of Fianna Fáilers, a smaller group of Sinn Féiners and a hodgepodge of Independents.

Call that an Opposition? He has 113 TDs in his brigade: more than double the strength of the fragmented band of deputies trying to ratchet up their indignation in the face of the Coalition’s rising impudence.

If Enda isn’t careful, that sort of comfortable political cushion could lead to the sort of arrogance and cockiness that so annoyed him during the long years of Fianna Fáil administrations.

Micheál Martin is getting nowhere during Leaders’ Questions. Neither is Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams.

The Taoiseach is content either to disregard their questions and waffle or to dismiss their right to ask them by bringing up their past.

As for the Technical Alliance, Enda’s approach depends on which of their three Dáil leaders is in possession. Disdain (Joe Higgins), condescension (Finian McGrath) and benign tolerance (Shane Ross).

Yesterday, you could sense the frustration in Martin and Adams. As for Ross, he enjoyed a matey exchange on the economy.

In this, the Taoiseach was aided and abetted by his legions of backbenchers, who have taken to heckling with abandon.

They laugh at Micheál Martin. They sneer at Gerry Adams. It was business as usual yesterday.

Micheál and Gerry raised two very live issues that are troubling large sections of society: the pension levy and the possibility that accident and emergency departments in some hospitals will have to close due to a shortage of doctors.

In both cases, their queries were dismissed by Enda and the crowing chorus behind him with a mixture of waffle and derision.

The Fianna Fáil leader was fuming over what he saw as an attempt by the Taoiseach to cover up reservations within Cabinet over the controversial levy. He said he asked unsuccessfully on three occasions in the Dáil to see the background documentation on the decision to introduce the levy.

“You knew what I was asking you at the time and you decided not to release the material. You covered up on this, Taoiseach, deliberately,” he said.

In the end, Micheál said he had to resort to Freedom of Information requests to get the material, which showed that the Minister for Social Protection had expressed concern over the impact of the pension measure.

Enda glibly remarked, to accompanying guffaws from his colleagues, that if Micheál’s government hadn’t cut back on the Freedom of Information Act he might have got what he wanted. He followed it up with a few low blows about Micheál’s record when he was in the Department of Health.

Gerry Adams, above the commotion, wanted to know which hospitals would be affected by the impending staff problem. He said he asked the same question last week and was ignored. “Now, today, without the heckling, listen to what I’m going to say to you,” he urged.

“Ooooh!” chortled the emboldened backbench pups, supplying the usual noises off about the IRA army council.

Enda began his reply to the Sinn Féin leader with a smirking, “I hope you didn’t slip into a former mode there by saying: ‘Listen to what I am going to say to you . . .’ ” They laughed uncontrollably on the Government side.

Then Enda explained he couldn’t say which hospitals might be affected and his Minister for Health is working to solve the situation.

And so to Shane Ross, who thanked the Taoiseach for complimenting him but said he didn’t want to be used as “a battering ram to hit Micheál Martin”. He was happy though to see the Government “moving to stand up to the ECB”. However, his satisfaction on the bondholders issue was tempered somewhat when he saw that the Minister for Finance “fell back into the friendly embrace of Madame Lagarde” at the euro zone meeting in Luxembourg.

The Coalition TDs howled. “You’re only jealous!” shouted one.

Deputy Ross wondered if anything would come of this “extraordinary courting” of France. “It is a procedure, Minister, which I challenge you to repeat with Madame Merkel,” he chuckled.

The Taoiseach, said Michael Noonan, “gets on in a professional capacity” with all his colleagues in Europe.

The whooping continued.

And the bad news is, with that enormous majority, it’ll only get worse.