Stupid aul' pencils have the last laugh

DÁIL SKETCH:MARTIN CULLEN shot out the revolving doors and scuttled at speed across the plinth, writes MIRIAM LORD

It was raining, but the Minister for Medals, Musicals and Mishaps was snug in the slipstream of two flunkies and a large green umbrella.

Reporters eyed him as he passed. They had just finished interviewing Opposition spokesmen about the demise of the Government’s embarrassing voting machines. The deputies raced out to the microphones with expressions of sympathy as soon as they heard the happy news.

And now here was the man who played a major part in that e-voting calamity.

“Minister! Minister! Do you have any comment to make on the scrapping of the voting machines?” Not since he nearly fell out of a helicopter has Kamikaze Cullen looked so animated.

He scuttled on, but swivelled his head and shouted: “I didn’t even know he was making a bloody announcement!” And that was that.

It must have come as a shock to Cullen, who stubbornly nursed the embarrassing voting system for many years in the face of much harsh criticism and many setbacks.

He loved those machines, so he did.

Yet John Gormley didn’t even have the courtesy to tell him he was pulling the plug on Martin’s electronic babies. Instead, he went to Cork and cruelly announced the vindication of the pencil and the end of an election era.

Of course, it was a merciful release. But the heartless leader of the Greens might have taken Kamikaze’s feelings into account before dropping his bombshell.

Meanwhile, Bertie Ahern was reportedly distraught when informed that his embarrassing voting experiment had failed.

“We’d be the laughing stock of Europe with our aul’ pencils if we weren’t already the laughing stock of Europe with our aul’ economy,” the former taoiseach would probably have said, had he been in the Dáil.

But, of course, he wasn’t.

Somebody who was in the Dáil was former junior minister Jilted John McGuinness. John isn’t bitter about losing his position. He’s just furious.

His arrival in the ranks of the disaffected was the big talking point among deputies yesterday. Less than 24 hours after he left Tánaiste Mary Coughlan and the Department of Trade and Enterprise, Jilted John was cutting up rough.

During his two-year tenure, it seems he and the Tánaiste got on like a house on fire – as in acrid and poisonous. Theirs did not appear be a happy working relationship.

Jilted John spent most of the day giving interviews about the lack of leadership in the Government and the general level of incompetence across all departments, and in particular, the one he had just left behind.

He’ll be a thorn in the Taoiseach’s side, surmised colleagues. Others speculated that Jilted John will become the querulous face of the unhappy rump, so to speak.

Mary Coughlan, it has to be said, was in marvellously high spirits after Wednesday’s minor cull. Having dispatched her troublesome junior, she wiped off her stiletto, put it back in her handbag and giggled and trilled her way though the Order of Business.

Then the House returned to debating the Labour Party’s motion on the removal of the social welfare Christmas bonus.

Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin got a savaging from the Opposition, but she bore up under the onslaught.

However, she drew the line at comments from Labour’s Emmet Stagg, declaring them “offensive”. Emmet, the great champion of the working man, told the Minister that she should be ashamed of herself for stopping the extra Christmas payment.

“But, of course, never having experienced a day’s poverty in her life and cossetted from such by her upper-middle-class lifestyle, she has neither sympathy for nor empathy with the poor,” pontificated Emmet.

The last time he sounded so exercised, Deputy Stagg, who hasn’t seen a day’s poverty since he went into the Dáil in 1987, was refusing to part with his long-service increment in a gesture of solidarity with himself.

“The poor need a champion and the Minister simply does not fit that bill,” said Incremental Emmet, who doesn’t do irony.

Mary O’Rourke rode to the defence of her Fianna Fáil sister. “To taunt and say silly things across the chamber – calling people Marie Antoinette, for example – is puerile and infantile . . . To think anybody would approach with delight saying to people that a Christmas bonus will not be paid would mean that person is very sadistic.”

Mary Hantoinette nodded in agreement from her ministerial chair.

Then Mammy O’Rourke made an interesting observation, which suggests that the Government may yet be contemplating pulling a nice little stroke for Christmas by restoring the Santy bonus in the nick of time.

“The Minister opened a chink in the argument last night . . . and indicated that if there was a chance of giving this Christmas bonus, she would grasp the opportunity and encourage the Minister for Finance to do so as well . . . I add my voice to this and will continue to do so.

“As the months go by and Christmas approaches, we hope there will be some avenue which could be further explored for the partial or whole payment of this Christmas bonus.”

Again, Mary Hantoinette nodded her agreement.

Let us hope this is the case, if only to cheer up Labour’s Ciarán Lynch, who waxed Dickensian during his contribution, which he began by quoting the opening line of A Christmas Carol.

He painted a heart-rending picture of aged grannies without as much as a turkey leg to chew on over the festive season, unable to buy Ugg boots for their ragged grandchildren and bottles of whiskey for their rat-arsed neighbours.

But, like Scrooge, Mary Hantoinette might still see the light. A Christmas Carol is a story of redemption, sniffed Ciarán, moist of eye.

There wasn’t dry seat in the House by the time he finished.