Government not in party mood for 13th anniversary

DÁIL SKETCH:IT WAS never going to be much of an anniversary party.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, in less than celebratory tones, observed that Fianna Fáil-led governments had been in power for 13 years this week.

He handed out the birthday brickbats: the national debt had tripled in the past 2½ years to €100 billion, with a deficit this year of more than €20 billion.

The Government could not answer a simple but serious question about the number of children who died in State care in the past decade, he said.

The 13 candles on the metaphorical birthday cake had burned out when Kenny accused the Government of “spin and waffle’’.

Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, an unwitting birthday host, looked glum as she sipped her first glass of water.

Members of her party, said Kenny, were now referring to the Health Service Executive as a “dysfunctional Frankenstein’’.

Kenny highlighted the Dáil’s short working year when he pursued the Tánaiste about the date for the promised children’s referendum.

“We have about 17 working days left before the House proposes to rise for the summer,’’ he said with a note of urgency.

Coughlan and her ministerial colleagues looked uneasy. The Lilliputian parliamentary sittings are the Government’s doing, with the frequently embarrassed rank-and-file TDs having little say.

Kenny continued, clearly intent on it being a morbid 13th anniversary. He noted the absence from the Order of Business of Minister for the Environment John Gormley, who has responsibility for the ill-fated Dublin docklands authority . “I am sorry, but I am not the Minister in the Department of the Environment,’’ said Coughlan.

Kenny pointed in the direction of an empty seat on the Government benches where the Green Party Minister might otherwise have been sitting. “He never comes in here any more. This is a scandal.’’

Ceann comhairle Séamus Kirk warned the Fine Gael leader he was being disorderly as Kenny continued to speculate on Gormley’s whereabouts.

“He is in the bog, cutting turf,’’ said Fine Gael colleague Michael Ring.

At the scheduled ministerial question time later, Gormley said it was too early to put a figure on the losses the docklands authority’s activities would cost the State.

The Tánaiste was on her second glass of water when a reference to the pending byelections further ruined the 13th anniversary.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore suggested that a High Court case of some years ago made it arguable that the Government had a constitutional duty to move the writ to fill the year-long vacancy in Coughlan’s Donegal South West constituency.

Labour’s Pat Rabbitte observed that he had never seen such enthusiasm for the hustings on the Government benches.

“From your side!’’ replied Coughlan, aware that some on the Opposition benches would privately look on the byelections with considerable trepidation.

As the anniversary petered out, it was a case of unlucky 13 for the Government. Still, there are only 17 or so working days before the summer escape from the national parliament for the Tánaiste and her Government colleagues.