Fighting talk almost has TDs losing their heads

DÁIL SKETCH:THERE WAS much talk of guillotining, slashing and stuffing in the Dáil yesterday.

It was prompted by the Government’s proposal to guillotine the Nama legislation debate at 8pm.

Fine Gael’s Alan Shatter thought it scandalous to suggest that having spent Wednesday dealing with four amendments at report stage, the remaining 131 could be adequately debated before last night’s deadline.

“If need be, members on this side of the House are quite prepared to sit into the small hours of the morning,” he added, evoking memories of last week’s all-night sitting.

Labour’s Joan Burton demurred. “As a woman deputy, perhaps I take a slightly different line from Deputy Shatter,” she said. “I understand that many deputies wish to go home to their families and children at some time between 8pm and 10pm tonight.” She had no difficulty sitting through the night, but it was not necessarily the most family-friendly way of doing business. Burton then said the House could sit today, starting at 9am, and continue on Saturday and Sunday, if necessary. Rural TDs wore expressions of horror.

“Not all of us live in Dublin,” said Limerick West FF TD John Cregan.

“What is the problem?” said Burton. “People are paid well enough to come into the House for a few extra days.”

Sinn Féin’s Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said it was “galling yesterday to witness the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, sitting beside an OECD representative and calling for the slashing of child benefit, the minimum wage and social welfare payments across the board”.

And he added, with all the energy he could muster: “It is high time that somebody told the Minister he should get stuffed.”

Shatter asked Tánaiste Mary Coughlan if she agreed that Lenihan had an “unusual hang-dog expression” on his face at Wednesday’s press conference with the OECD secretary general. Lenihan looked incredulous.

Throughout the Nama debate, bankers received a roasting from several TDs, who clearly would have sent them to the guillotine for contributing to the necessity for the legislation in the first place. Labour’s Michael D Higgins suggested that there was a disproportionate representation of bankers on Ibec and the chambers of commerce.

“They come up to you late at night and say we will probably be driven back to the old days,’’ he said. “It is as if we were going back to a time when the bank manager would buy the pink pages of the Financial Times to show he was an intellectual and understood the stock market.’’ No one was suggesting that, said Higgins. “People just want them to be responsible,’’ he snapped.

Higgins accused Ibec and the chambers of commerce of “staying as quiet as mice’’ while all around them small businesses, employing three to 20 employees, were being bled dry by bankers who, in turn, said they had no control over the situation.

As the guillotine hour approached, Higgins and his fellow TDs just stopped short of shouting “off with their heads’’.