Ministers in top spending departments are finding it torture

DÁIL SKETCH:Brian Lenihan has instituted a reign of terror as Biffo becomes a pussycat

IT’S TORTURE being a Minister these days. Brian Lenihan – the Government’s garlic-chomping grand inquisitor – has instituted a reign of terror. Chief among his targets are the three wretches in charge of the State’s biggest spending departments: health, education and social welfare.

Mary Harney is walking around the place like a zombie. Hasn’t had a wink of sleep at her desk in a fortnight. Each time she drifts off, an air horn goes off in Hawkins House and the leg of her chair collapses.

Batt O’Keeffe can’t even sit down. (Which explains why he wasn’t in the chamber yesterday for Leaders’ Questions). The Minister for Finance has taken to beating him with a rubber hose.

Mary Hanafin is minus two fingernails and, as we write, the OPW is installing a ducking stool next to the jacuzzi in the ministerial washroom.

Yesterday evening Labour deputies complained that Minister Lenihan had shown them a discourtesy by not turning up for their debate on mortgage arrears. Instead, he sent along Minister of State Martin Mansergh.

But Brian couldn’t make it. He was too busy, off torturing Ministers to extract a few more million from their budgets.

He was in the chamber yesterday afternoon to take finance questions. Fine Gael’s Kieran O’Donnell asked him if “the line Ministers” were taking the McCarthy report into account in terms of determining where savings would be made in their departments. Had they reported back to him on the matter?

Brian, flicking a congealed blood-fleck from his lapel, replied: “Each department is being interrogated on the recommendations of the McCarthy report and on what contribution it can make to savings within public expenditure.

“Of course, at the conclusion of that process of interrogation, there is then a political decision-making exercise . . .”

He was five minutes late for questions and seemed in a hurry during the session. When he left, we could have sworn we saw him snapping on a pair of latex gloves as he strode purposefully back to Merrion Street.

IndaKinny has taken a leaf from Lenihan’s book. No, not the garlic habit, but the torture thing.

Before the Dáil reconvened in the afternoon, the Fine Gael leader took to the plinth and announced that he’s off on tour again. Fresh from his nationwide Inda Does Europe roadshow, he’s now launching an Inda Does Economics extravaganza.

It will be called the “Working Together” tour and over the course of the next few weeks Inda will travel around the country tormenting employers, business leaders and “the newly unemployed”. Frontman Inda will appear with a “Fine Gael economic team” comprising the party’s “main economic spokespersons”.

It’s sure getting crowded on the finance front in FG. Look across the floor, they sniff, and who have you got? Poor Biffo, Count Brian Lenihan and chipmunk backbencher Frank Fahey. Frank is the Fianna Fáil talking-head of choice when Lenihan is away torturing Ministers.

Still, Inda will probably get full houses for his meetings because Deputy George Lee, who is still box-office in the world of political showbiz, is chairing them.

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Cowen is content to leave the thumb-screws and cats-paws to Minister Lenihan. The weekend news that Brian is an allium aficionado has only served to reinforce his legend among quaking Ministers – enduring interrogation with pungent fumes is not pleasant.

Biffo is a pussycat. “Any suggestion that I am seeking out confrontation, or taking encouragement from people who seek confrontation, do not know me,” he told the Dáil. “Since my first ministry, as minister for labour, I have sought progress by way of agreement.”

And for the nasty stuff, there’s always his highly fragranced interrogator-in-chief – Brian Lenihan.