Mattie going over the edge not enough for stag party in Dáil

DÁIL SKETCH:LIKE A team of police negotiators, the Government's men and women tried to talk Mattie down. They worked urgently, in relays.

A large crowd gathered to watch the drama.

The deputy for Tipperary South stood on the edge in his shirtsleeves, preparing to jump. Not for the first time, it must be said.

In his short Dáil career Mattie McGrath has been involved in more climbdowns than the Kerry Mountain Rescue.

This time, it seemed different.

Time passed. Tension rose among the spectators. Some of them covered their mouths with their hands, fearing the worst.

The negotiators reasoned with Mattie. They pleaded with him. Tried to make him see the error of his ways. But there were rumours he had already been kicked out of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party for not turning up to vote. What had he to lose?

The Opposition taunted from the safe ground. “Come on down, Mattie! Come on down! The price is right.”

The members of the Ward Union Hunt in the public gallery prayed McGrath would go over the edge and take a couple of his colleagues with him.

Mattie put his jacket back on. Then he jumped. In slow motion. (It takes a few minutes for the electronic vote timer to count down.) “Oooh!” went the journalists as he went hurtling away from his parliamentary party.

“Oooh!” went the watchers from the Ward Union Hunt, trying to work out if the Government losing Mattie meant they could retain their weekly sport.

But it would not be enough and John Gormley and the Green Party’s controversial stag hunting Bill was carried.

The people in the public gallery got to their feet. The Ward Union had fought a high-powered, aggressive campaign to defeat the Bill. They ferociously lobbied Government politicians and brought their argument to the forefront of the media. But their efforts ended in failure.

They looked devastated.

This was a very strange day in Leinster House.

It was a very uncomfortable time for many Fianna Fáil deputies, who found themselves voting in favour of a Bill for which they didn’t care too much.

It was an equally unsettling day for the Labour Party, with many of their members having to hold their noses when it came to adopting the party line of voting against a ban stag hunting.

“I don’t expect anything better from you,” said Minister for the Environment John Gormley, voice dripping with disdain for Fine Gael, “because your party is in disarray.” But he reserved his full contempt for Labour. “I find you absolutely shameful.”

It was difficult to disagree with him. The principled men and women of the Labour Party, who love to take a stand and cleave to it, blithely voting against a long-expressed opposition to animal cruelty and blood sports.

No amount of shouting from Willie Penrose from Westmeath could change that, although he got a noisy round of applause from the Ward Union people in the public gallery.

It was notable that during the debate on the Bill, few senior members of the party turned up. When they did their leader’s bidding and voted against the Government, their urban-based deputies looked deeply unhappy.

Tommy Broughan from Dublin North East stuck to his principles and didn’t show up.

Given that Labour appears to have snaffled Fianna Fáil’s game plan in the run-up to election, poor Tommy might await a fate similar to Mattie. Heart of the rowl Labour man Tommy might lose the whip.

Still, it’s another interest group in the bag. As they say in Tesco – every little helps. Isn’t that right, Eamon? The talk all day was of thin wedges and knife wedges.

Fianna Fáil’s Meath East deputies, Mary Wallace and Thomas Byrne, were on the horns of a dilemma over this stag hunting ban. The Ward Union is in their constituency and they were under fierce pressure to oppose it.

Deputy Wallace, in particular, has family ties to the hunt and was deeply conflicted over her loyalty to the party and her natural inclination to vote to save the Ward Union.

Green leader John Gormley tried to convince her and her doubting colleagues that the measure would not represent “the thin end of the wedge”. His declaration that “there are people in my own party who shoot, who angle, who fish” gave rise to derisory snorts on all sides of the House.

It was Mary O’Rourke who put him right on the thickness of that wedge. The rural people she represents “will not entertain, nor will I, nor will Fianna Fáil, any further intrusion into rural pursuits” she said.

He wasn’t to think that, once he got the stag hunting ban passed, that he “was free to roam again among the hedgerows and the fishing locks and the streams where harmless pursuits are carried out”. However, she said a deal had been done between Fianna Fáil and the Greens and that had to be honoured. She would vote for the Bill, but stressed that Gormley’s party would be taking no more liberties with rural pursuits.

Unlike Willie Penrose, who spoke before her, Mary’s contribution was met with silence from the Opposition and the crowd in the gallery.

Mammy O’Rourke was unfazed. “I’ll clap myself if there’s nobody else to do it,” she declared.