Deputies find it hard to resist bank holiday urge to go Awol

DÁIL SKETCH:IT IS the most important legislation in the history of the State. So important that everyone wants to speak on it at every stage. So important that the amendments are being discussed in the Dáil chamber because everyone won't fit into the committee rooms.

So important that by mid-afternoon, there were more Department of Finance officials in the chamber – four – than TDs from any one party.

Fianna Fáil retrieved the situation slightly with the return of a deputy to have four people in the House, including Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan. And after a while Fine Gael came back to six deputies and Labour to five.

But it was, after all, the start of the bank holiday weekend. Only the 11 members of the finance committee and the Minister are eligible to vote on the Bill and the Dáil will not be back in plenary session until Tuesday week. Oh the temptation to go Awol. Will it be a case that “the only show in town”, as the Nama debate has been called by so many, could end up being the “no-show show”? The signs are not good. And it had all started so well – for a Thursday morning, at least.

Forty TDs sat in the chamber to begin discussions of 250 amendments to the Nama Bill. So complex and involved is the 144-page Bill that it requires a 31-page explanatory memorandum.

Committee chairman Michael Ahern took the Ceann Comhairle’s chair and engaged in what can only be described as very light regulation of speakers. So light that by the end of the day they got through just 12 amendments.

But there were a few smiles. The thrill of sitting in a Cabinet Minister’s seat was almost too much for the three backbenchers beside Lenihan. Michael Mulcahy, Timmy Dooley and Thomas Byrne were like boys with new toys, such was their glee at sitting in those hallowed chairs. Backbenchers Michael McGrath (Cork South Central) and Independent TD Noel Grealish were a little more modest and satisfied themselves with sitting on the junior ministers’ benches.

Fine Gael’s Richard Bruton employed “the pint of plain” to highlight how dangerous he thought the Government’s draft business plan was. If Diageo were doing a business plan about selling Guinness in Dublin they would look at transaction flows and likely flows. Most likely translation: “If Guinness did business plans they’d probably be the best business plans in the world.”

Joan Burton moved east for her inspiration. “The bankers and the developers are the Irish oligarchs and when they speak to the Department of Finance, the department trembles.”

But Sinn Féin finance spokesman Arthur Morgan had the quote of the day when he spoke of low-income families and the unemployed. “Those people feel as if they are being thrown overboard from the lifeboat to make room for the golden-circle people: the speculators, the bankers and their cronies.”