Unusual signs of life detected in backbenchers

Dail Sketch: The Dáil was debating an old, vexed question yesterday: the one about whether government backbenchers constitute life in any meaningful form.

The traditional view has been that they do not. Government backbenchers are generally dismissed as "lobby fodder," an undifferentiated mass of cellular material whose sole function is to sit silently behind the Taoiseach and press the appropriate voting button.

But their role was placed under the microscope in the Dáil, first by Prof Joe Higgins who, in what he believed was a scientific breakthrough, isolated the name of a Fianna Fáil TD among those who had tabled questions to the Taoiseach. And his excitement was echoed by Dr Pat Rabbitte, who identified primitive signs of animation in a motion signed by 40 rank-and-file members of Mr Ahern's party against the cutbacks in the community employment scheme.

Their research threw up dramatically different findings. Prof Higgins suggested the sight of a Fianna Fáiler (Jim Glennon, Dublin North) tabling a question to the Taoiseach (on the costs of the Moriarty tribunal) was "as rare as the cry of a corncrake on a summer's evening".

By contrast, Dr Rabbitte found that backbench revolt was all too typical of the organism "now that the cuts have gone through". Both men agreed, however, that there was insufficient evidence to declare the backbenchers a proper life-form at this stage, and more research was needed.

Another broad characteristic of the government backbencher is a tendency to criticise the government outside the house. A point that was underlined by Barry Andrews (FF, Dún Laoghaire) when he came out in support of the Tánaiste signing the EU motion on stem-cell research, and suggested that he was in such a minority within his party he could be accused of "sowing dissent" by publicly supporting the Government.

Across Kildare Street, there was lobby fodder of a different kind when eight members of Youth Defence chained themselves together in the foyer of the Tánaiste's Department. Gardaí had to cut them apart before removing them. Whereupon the protest moved to the gates of Leinster House which, after a mini-invasion on Monday, were locked.

The good news for the Taoiseach yesterday was that a dissenting frontbencher was again singing from the Government hymn-sheet. As Mr Ahern listed some of the more paltry social welfare increases paid by the Rainbow Government, Michael Smith intoned "Oh my God" repeatedly in mock horror.

So enthusiastically did he throw off his recent vow of silence that Pat Rabbitte was halted mid-question by the verbal assault. "You've found your voice!" he told the heckling minister, before suggesting that he lose it again.