Miriam Lord: Mary Lou is all for the EU-UK deal - just don’t expect her to say its name

Mary Lou McDonald was really pleased with the No Name Framework between Britain and the EU, even if she couldn’t bring herself to utter its actual title.

“Very, very welcome,” she told the Taoiseach. “It looks as if a positive outcome has been achieved for all of Ireland.

“The protocol represents hard-won protections for Ireland against the sharpest edge of the Tory Brexit,” said the Sinn Féin leader, requesting a full Dáil discussion on the Brexit breakthrough deal.

What’s it called again?

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The Balmoral Accord? The Sandhurst Declaration? The Saxe-Coburg Settlement?

The Wih-

The Wih-

The Wih-

The what?

Spit it out, Mary Lou.

“The agreement that’s been struck between the British government and the European Commission.”

Why the hell did the principals have to meet in a posh town in Berkshire when they could have chosen a venue closer to Eurostar’s London terminus, thus saving commission president Ursula von der Leyen from having to make another long journey?

Somewhere like Kilburn. Or Cricklewood.

Then we could have had the Kilburn Concord. Or the Cricklewood Charter. But to butter up the DUP they called it the Windsor Framework.

That’s a bit of sickener for the Shinners, but, on the plus side, the arrival of Rishi Sunak at the negotiating table brought about a good result along with an unintentional admission from the Brexit-supporting PM that the EU is the bee’s knees after all.

[ Windsor Framework: Sunak urges Tory MPs not to create ‘another Westminster drama’ over deal ]

The Taoiseach welcomed the framework in Irish and English. “As a people and as a country we can be, I believe, comfortable and satisfied with the outcome.”

Leo Varadkar doesn’t want to say anything which might jeopardise the agreement. He listed all the advantages which people in Northern Ireland will be able to enjoy, thanks to having a foot in both territories.

“The same items that are on the shelves in supermarkets in Britain will be in the same supermarkets in Belfast,” he told the Dáil, resisting the opportunity to gloat about near-empty supermarket shelves in Brexit Britain currently stocked with mangel-wurzel, hairy carrots, fresh air and Spam.

Saviour of the protocol Sunak flew to Northern Ireland on Tuesday morning to buttress his legacy-defining agreement to ditch the supposedly brilliant agreement he fully supported in the first place. He was so pleased with his handiwork he completely lost the run of himself.

“Northern Ireland is in the unbelievably special position – unique position in the entire world – in having privileged access not just to the UK market… but also the EU single market,” he burbled. “Nobody else has that. No one. Only you guys, only here.”

The North is now “the world’s most exciting economic zone”, declared the oblivious PM from the world’s most hilariously irony-free zone.

If only the rest of the UK could enjoy all these great benefits of the EU single market, the very ones the country enjoyed before leaving it because... well, just because.

Good man, Rishi. Basking in the sunlit drumlins of Northern Ireland while blowing a big hole in the Brexit lie for the folks back home in Britain.

He left London a fully paid-up Brexiteer but morphed into a turnip-eating surrender Tory by the time he reached Armagh.

His wholehearted embrace of the previously derided EU will have softened the blow for Mary Lou and her Sinn Féin colleagues at having to come to swallow an agreement called the Windsor Framework. And all the good mood music from across the Border gave her plenty of scope to call on the DUP to “end its blockade” of the NI Executive and return to work in the Stormont parliament.

“The onus is very much now on the DUP to join with everyone else in making politics work,” she told the Taoiseach, asking him to encourage the party back into government.

But Leo didn’t want to rush anything.

“I think we should allow a little bit of time and space for that to happen and for him to consult his party. I think that is not unreasonable.”

[ DUP should be given ‘time and space’ to consider Windsor Framework, Varadkar says ]

The tantalising prospect of the ending of the protocol palaver for once and for all was such an important development it took the spotlight off what would probably have been the big story of the day in Leinster House.

Fianna Fáil Minister of State Niall Collins (of the Limerick O’Connor-Collinses) is at the centre of allegations published by The Ditch website that he gave misleading information on a planning application 22 years ago when seeking to build a house on land owned by his father.

Deputy Collins issued a robust denial soon after the report appeared, saying that he acted correctly when making the planning application. The Minister at the Department of Further and Higher Education also indicated in a statement that he is consulting his legal advisers over the matter.

Before the Dáil convened on Tuesday afternoon, spokespersons from the Labour Party, the Social Democrats and People Before Profit arrived in dribs and drabs on to the plinth to say that he should come before the House at the earliest opportunity to explain.

Sinn Féin has stayed out of this one so far.

Labour’s Ivana Bacik broached the topic with the Taoiseach, asking if and when the junior Minister would be making a statement to the House.

Leo was able to tell her that Niall Collins would be doing just that some time later in the day. It later emerged that – like Jeffrey Donaldson – he needs a little more time to prepare his reply.

The TD for Limerick County has come out fighting and the word from Fianna Fáil is that he will explain all in the coming days.

Unlike others on the explanation trail, they say he will not be making two trips to the chamber – the first to make his statement and the second to apologise.

Which would make a nice change.