It was a rough week in the Dail with the Opposition baying for blood over the Hugh O'Flaherty appointment, but deputies should take heart from The Architecture of Democracy exhibition at the OPW on St Stephen's Green, Dublin. The first in the new atrium, it runs until June 23rd. One of the exhibits, which have already been shown in Glasgow and now go to Manchester, Berlin, Barcelona and Canberra, is a video of spectacular moments in parliaments around the world and - although the aim is to deepen public understanding of democratic traditions - the particular emphasis in the video is on unparliamentary behaviour. Some footage is wonderful.
The video starts with archive footage of Soviet troops storming the Reichstag in Berlin in 1945 and ends with a huge row in the Russian parliament in 1998 when Vladimir Zhirinovsky threw bottles of water over rivals when he wasn't allowed to speak. In between are such momentous moments as John F. Kennedy and Mary Robinson addressing both houses of the Oireachtas and Nelson Mandela's inauguration in Pretoria in 1994.
The most curious moments, perhaps, are the unexpected ones, including deputies hiding under their seats as pro-Franco officers open fire in Cortes, in Spain in 1981; lengthy fisticuffs involving dozens in the Italian parliament in 1992; and a general melee in the Turkish parliament in 1997. In all these rows, of various degrees of seriousness, the protagonists are exclusively male - but in fisticuffs in the Taiwanese parliament in 1994, all the participants in the fracas were female. The fight started when one representative accused two male MPs of being peeping Toms. Another woman leapt from her seat and struck the speaker across the face, whereby more women entered the fray, hats were torn off, hair was pulled and kicks were delivered. We haven't reached that stage here - yet.