Watch out below as Dáil mess is dumped upon us
Gardyloo! An ancient cry to warn pedestrians when the contents of a chamber pot were about to be thrown from an upstairs window into the street below.
Imagine the unfortunate peasant, walking along minding his own business, only for a bucket of somebody else’s slop to land on his head.
Scroll ahead a few hundred years. We have modern sanitation and brown bins and industrial-strength vacuum cleaners now, but the people upstairs can still make an unmerciful mess.
It is the reason Fine Gael and Labour literally swept into government. They assumed power armed with yard brushes and shovels, promising to clean up after the previous occupants and their profligate retinue of corporate carousers.
And they’ve been good to their word.
Gardyloo, as the Coalition upends another budget-sized basin of somebody else’s swill on top of innocent heads.
This is really annoying Joe Public.
When they asked the new intake to scour the stinking bucket of the boom years, they didn’t expect to have to wear its contents.
But Enda and Eamon don’t seem to understand this. What’s the hullabaloo about? Aren’t they doing the dirty job they were elected to do? Cleaning up after the last shower and their partying pals? It’s not like they enjoy doing it. The Taoiseach and Tánaiste and his Ministers complain about it all the time.
Coming up to two years in government and the Coalition is still on its hands and knees, scrubbing for Ireland.
Enda has a severe case of housemaid’s knee, but by this stage everyone else has a severe case of household ear from having to listen to him.
Day after day after day, trailing pungent fumes of Domestos and carbolic, he struggles into the Dáil chamber and moans about his lot. “The mess that was left for us to clean up requires difficult decisions that impact on people’s lives,” he wailed yesterday. It’s his excuse for everything.
Unfortunately, the Taoiseach explains that he can’t reverse decisions such as the cut in respite grants for carers. They are the innocent by-product of his Coalition’s clean-up campaign.
Heartbreaking as it is to see these people massing in the cold outside the gates of Leinster House yesterday.
Perish the thought that Enda and Eamon might return the chaos and clutter to the people who made the mess in the first case.
It’s always easier to chuck a few chamber pots out the top windows of Government Buildings on to the little people below, then stay as far away from them as possible, with a hanky pressed to the nostrils.
Some government deputies ventured outside the Kildare Street gates yesterday afternoon as the small group of carers held their protest. They didn’t stick around long. They got a cold and noisy reception.
