FROM THE ARCHIVES:TDs were feeling the heat and in skittish form on the last day of the Dáil term in 1983, as captured by Maev Kennedy in this Dáil sketch.
- JOE JOYCE
‘SOME OF the most orderly deputies are becoming quite disorderly,’ lamented the Ceann Comhairle [Tom Fitzpatrick]. “It’s the heat and the lack of water,” roared Ray we-will-fight-them-on-the beaches Burke.
“They are very disorderly over there this morning, aren’t they?” agreed Charles J [Haughey]. The Taoiseach [Garret FitzGerald] got a fit of the giggles. It was obviously the last day of term.
“I would like to raise on the adjournment the Highly Important Matter of . . .” began Terry Leyden . “Normally I would say that the Chair will communicate with the deputy, but it would only be misleading the deputy,” said the Chair. “There is no debate on the adjournment today.”
“It won’t be that easy to dispose of Deputy Leyden,” warned Pádraig Flynn . But it was. The deputy was so startled he was actually speechless.
At 3pm precisely, Gene Fitzgerald [FF] stood up. Wasn’t it normal, he said menacingly, for a speaker for the Main Opposition Party to be called an hour before the end of an adjournment debate, before the Government speaker concluded?
Poor Eileen Lemass, trapped in the Chair, made her Solomon judgement – she let [Proinsias] de Rossa [Workers’ Party] finish, and then called Albert Reynolds . And was immediately faced with Frank Prendergast and Albert Reynolds and Jim Tunney and Liam Kavanagh and Frankie McLoughlin and Gene Fitzgerald and Padraig Flynn and Dick Spring all on their feet and roaring at her. A conspiracy to silence him! roared Albert Reynolds. As if anything could.
And faster and faster and louder and louder he cantered headlong through Planned and Programmed Deceit and Dishonesty – he ran out of time and cantered on, sat down and still hurtled through “Ye stand indicted out of yer own mouths ... if ye’ve a bad director there’s only one thing to do – SACK HIM!
“Not bad for a point-to-point, but not in the thoroughbred class of Deputy Reynolds,” said Padraig Flynn admiringly, as Dick Spring [Tánaiste and Minister for the Environment] trotted on through stabilising the construction industry and healthy tension in Coalition. As they proffered the sugar lump, he rolled his eye, bared his teeth and lashed out with a mean right hoof – “We don’t want your crocodile tears which you only shed for us when we’re in government, and you’re going to have to put up with that. You look to your own backs and worry about your own party.”
A lesser man might have turned him into dog-food for that, but Deputy Reynolds just bided his time. “I am putting the question that the Dáil stands adjourned until 2.30pm on Wednesday, October 19th. Agreed,” asked the Ceann Comhairle. “We wouldn’t dispute that for a moment,” said Deputy Reynolds, stretching luxuriantly. “We’ll hear all the bad news when we’re away on holidays.”
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