Miriam Lord: High emissions in heated debate on climate change

Would you look at the time? Ten weeks already, and not a government in the House washed.

Although after much huffing and puffing, sources close to some of the negotiators began reporting “some movement” yesterday.

Others were less confident.

“It could be Tuesday now,” they sighed, looking rather pinched. It’s like being on constipation watch in here.

But the struggle continues.

As Fine Gael hunted for compliant Endapendents to appease the gods of Fianna Fáil, those sole-trader TDs were not trotting meekly to their sacrifice. Certain members of the Rural Rump and the Urban Alliance appear to have more "advisers" in tow now than they did during the lengthy opening phase of the talks, as they ponder whether or not to join Enda Kenny's minority government.

But who wants to be stuck in deliberations on a sunny weekend when temperatures are set to soar? A question not just for consideration by politicians involved in the business of forming a government, but one also for their colleagues who spent the afternoon making statements on the subject of climate change.

Statements which drifted off into the ether. Just more emissions to add to the problem.

Soaring temperatures are among our earthly worries – not that the two main parties seem to care. Outgoing Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly tore strips off Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil for not bothering to put anything about "the global cause of this generation" in their document underpinning their minority government deal.

“Incidentally, how this document took 70 days to write is incredible and astonishing. That’s 10 days per page,” he scoffed.

Lack of interest

There wasn’t one TD in the chamber when he began his speech, which did nothing to improve his humour. He surveyed the empty benches with disgust, testament, as he saw it, to the main parties’ lack of interest in the issue.

Alan seemed unaware that the climate change session began a little early, after a short break in proceedings. Deputies arrived back at the appointed time, but too late to escape Kelly’s ire.

The Green Party leader spoke passionately on the subject.

He was followed by Kerry independent Danny Healy-Rae, who also spoke passionately on the subject.

Danny started as he meant to go on.

"I'll have to say to you, Eamon Ryan, I don't agree with all this story about climate change at all and there has been patterns of climate change going back over the years before, indeed, there was ever a combustible engine working or put in place in this country or in any country," declared the Kerry independent.

Danny believes it’s all down to a higher power. You mean Kerry County Council?

“What I’m saying to you is patterns of climate change took place regardless and mankind, I don’t believe, hadn’t any hand, act or part in it.”

Then, Danny told his wide-eyed audience, you can go back further when “we had the Ice Age and the whole country was covered in ice. There was one year particularly the sun didn’t shine at all, at all.”

Here’s the clincher for the Green Party leader and his fancy-dan climate change notions. “And there weren’t yet any combustible engines yet in our country.”

Yet there is a carbon tax in existence because people think they can change the weather and instead all they are doing is hurting people in all sectors of the community and “hurting the tractors out on the farms” and where is that money going?

It didn’t pay for the home helps in Kerry last Christmas. People were dead before they got paid, fumed Danny.

“I believe that God above is in charge of the weather and that we here can’t do anything about it.”

So there you have it.

No climate change guff in Kilgarvan.

Maybe he meant to say: “I believe that God above is in charge of government formation and that we here can’t do anything about it.”

Danny and the brother aren’t expected to figure now in the final shake-out.

It was a very odd day around Leinster House. Sinn Féin took to the plinth to dispense its daily dose of indignation. This time Mary Lou McDonald was at the microphone to give out about the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael deal. She did so with gusto.

“This document, call it a programme for government, call it what you will,” she harrumphed. “It’s not enough.”

Penal Laws

But she ended up having to comment on her party leader’s latest Twitter faux pas. This, rather like Danny Healy-Rae, took her on a tour down through the centuries as she ruminated on the oppression of the Irish by the British from “the Penal Laws to the Famine”.

This because of Gerry Adams’s late-night use of the “N-word” in a tweet about the oppressed of Ballymurphy.

There are parallels from the historic to the contemporary, she said, in between fielding questions on her leader’s propensity for tweeting about rubber duckies and teddy bears.

“Gerry doesn’t have a racist bone in his body,” she said of her boss, a man who speaks very highly of IRA terrorists.

A strange day. But at least, on constipation watch, there is some movement.