Miriam Lord’s Week: Lunch on boulevard of broken promises

Ah lads, this is getting beyond the beyond. Any chance of a decision sometime soon? As the Trinity talks stutter along, the latest Leinster House theory is that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are well on the way towards agreeing on minority government, but – and this applies to FF in particular, they must impress on supporters how they fought like tigers during a very long, difficult and bruising process.

But listening to Micheál Martin’s team speaking to reporters after they finished talks on Friday, it sounded like agreement is still some distance away, if possible at all. It must have been terribly traumatic for them.

So traumatic, we hear they were slurping pints in the Dáil members’ bar by teatime, having made it back from Pearse Street in time to see themselves on RTÉ’s Six One News.

Apparently there are a number of sticking points between the two parties and they need to go back to their respective leaders to seek guidance.

Fine Gael’s negotiators may have a problem in this regard: Enda Kenny was telling people in the Dáil canteen on Friday about his packed schedule this weekend, which includes a charity cycle in the Phoenix Park, a trip to Arbour Hill, a big day out in Croke Park and sundry other activities.

“Never lose a deal” was his cryptic message to those who asked him how the formation talks are going.

Fianna Fáil politicians were going around warning that the talks were “on the verge of collapse” while their Fine Gael counterparts appeared far more relaxed.

The groups had to vacate their rooms in the provost’s house on Friday morning because it was booked for another event.

They moved across to the Biomedical Sciences Institute on the corner of Pearse Street before going for lunch.

The Fine Gael people went to Trinity’s staff dining room, the East Dining Hall beside Botany Bay.

But the Fianna Fáil contingent, perhaps not wishing to be seen fraternising with the other side, went off to nearby Kennedy’s pub.

It’s been two months now since the general election. Members of the media who hang around Leinster House for a living are in a state of emotional collapse.

At yet another radio panel discussion about the talks, at least Sinn Féin’s Peadar Tóibín – not noted as a barrel of laughs – provided some comic relief on Friday.

He waded in as journalists Alison O’Connor and Catherine Halloran declared themselves fed up with all the political posturing.

“Lookit, enough is enough” said O’Connor to RTÉ’s Keelin Shanley.

“And that is the issue, actually,” began the sanctimonious Tóibín.

“If you ask us why Sinn Féin isn’t more involved, we could have made the decision to faff around in and out of important looking buildings, with big files under our hands and take loads of media airtime in front of. . .”

Fianna Fáil’s Thomas Byrne had a conniption. “That’s what Pearse Doherty tried to do yesterday. . . He went on to the plinth to attack Fianna Fáil over a deal that didn’t exist.”

All Catherine Halloran could do was laugh at Peadar’s chutzpah.

Sinn Féin hasn’t been faffing in and out of Leinster House looking for media attention? “You do that on the plinth every day!” guffawed the Irish Star’s political correspondent. And isn’t that the truth?

We were struck by the words of RTÉ’s Brian Dowling as he wondered where the talks are heading.

“What becomes of the water charges?” he wondered. Like Eamon Ryan in the Dáil on Thursday, we feel a song coming on.

As I walk this land of broken dreams

I have visions of many things

But happiness is just an illusion

Filled with sadness and confusion

What becomes of the water charges

From Big Phil who’s now departed

I know I’ve got to find

Some kind of peace of mind

Maybe

Hothouse atmosphere as Ryan begs Brits not to quit

The Green Party leader got so carried away on Thursday at the possibility of a British exit from the EU he almost burst into song.

There wasn’t a dry seat in Leinster House by the time he finished his moving recital. Brexit? Eamon Ryan does not want it to happen.

“I’m going to be writing to my first cousins – I’ve 10 of them in the UK,” he informed the Dáil.

“We have to be sensitive about how we tell them how to vote, but I’ll be writing, and maybe I’ll be sending a tune to them – those immortal words from that Irish song.” That song being Don’t Go by the Hothouse Flowers.

Ryan teed up his performance with a short personal observation before launching into the lyrics.

“It’s a beautiful spring day here in Dublin. It’s good to be alive,” he chirruped to his startled audience.

But there was more. “There’s a smell of fresh-cut grass and it’s filling up my senses,” he declared, as Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan looked on fascinated.

“And the sun is shining down on the blossoms in the avenue. There’s a buzzing fly hanging around the bluebells and the daisies and there’s a lot more loving left in this world,” he cried, just a few notes short of a warble. “So don’t go! Don’t leave us now! Stick around and laugh a while. Thank you.”

Sure all they can do in the Dáil these days is stick around and laugh.

“You were just short of the guitar,” chuckled the Ceann Comhairle. It’s a pity Finian McGrath wasn’t around. He could have supplied one to Eamon.

The Independent TD for Dublin Bay North is never far from his guitar, unfortunately.

It was ever thus: McGrath produced a newspaper clipping during the week dated April 22nd, 1972, where he’s photographed with his ballad group after they won a youth club talent contest.

Meanwhile, Charlie Flanagan was very impressed by Eamon’s contribution.

“It is on occasions such as this that we all welcome the Green Party back to the parliament. I wish you and your colleagues success during the lifetime of the 32nd Dáil. I enjoyed your comments.” Labour’s Seán Sherlock, muttered something.

We checked the official record afterwards. “They had to shut down the Burren Mount after they [Hothouse Flowers] made that video” is apparently what he said. We were baffled.

Sherlock, name notwithstanding, was baffled too. “It was the Berlaymont. Don’t Go was played during the interval of the Eurovision in 1988,” he explains.

“I was a big ‘Flowers’ fan. They closed down the Berlaymont building in Brussels a few years after they played on the roof. Asbestos.”

Seanad ballot count will push politicos in with plebs

Counting in the Seanad election begins on Monday in Leinster House. The action will take place in the Members’ Dining Room, one of the few rooms large enough to house the long tables needed to sort and count all the ballots.

The count is expected to go on for at least four days, which means that those TDs and senators who prefer to dine in quiet segregation in their dedicated restaurant will have to join the hoi polloi in the self-service canteen without waiters or linen on the tables.

Meanwhile, the votes for candidates on the two university panels will be counted from Tuesday, when polls close.

The NUI count will be in the RDS and Trinity votes will be counted in TCD’s Public Theatre, otherwise known as the Exam Hall.

With the elections for the various vocational panels done, the next few months will be difficult for our county councillors, those who hold the lion’s share of votes for the seats on offer.

They have been soft- soaped and buttered-up by all the hopefuls trying to get their mitts on one of the cushiest numbers in Ireland: a seat in the Upper House.

The pay is excellent, the hours short, the company agreeable, and the surroundings excellent.

However, the new batch will soon have to move from the Seanad’s exquisite chamber to facilitate urgent renovation work. That is, should the Lower House ever get around to the forming a government.

Filling the gap with unknowns

It’s been a thrilling interregnum so far. Our legislators may not be able to legislate, but they can still talk.

In the absence of a government and in between foraging for microphones on the plinth, TDs marked time in the Dáil this week by making speeches on “health” and “insurance costs” (Wednesday) and statements on “EU/UK relations” (Thursday).

The Brexit debate ran out of steam two hours before it was scheduled to finish. But not before Fine Gael’s Bernard Rumsdurkan, channelling a former US defence secretary, had his say.

“I believe there is nothing positive about Brexit for this State, Northern Ireland and Great Britain and everything will be negative.

“There is not only the fear of the unknown but there is also the unknown. When that unknown becomes known, it will then dawn on all of us that perhaps we should have looked at everything differently at the time.”

Tommy Broughan of Independents 4 Change had a Donald Rumsfeld-inspired question: “What about the known unknowns?”

“I will deal with them and the known unknowns shortly,” replied Rumsdurkan, to the unfettered snores of the delighted TDs remaining in the chamber.

Here’s what Donald Rumsfeld said in 2002, words that could be applied to the frazzled media’s ever-changing state of knowledge on the government formation talks: “There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know.”

Bernard Rumsdurkan, on the other hand, knows everything.