The stress starts today as the real world breaks the spell of Lowry pantomime

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has no time to join the antics of the Dáil chamber in a row over financial jiggery-pokery that looks like small beer compared to his money woes

IT WAS lunchtime when the real world temporarily intruded.

Michael Noonan padded down the main staircase. He seemed preoccupied.

But it wasn’t with the business grinding aimlessly on in the chamber behind him.

“How’s finance going?” “Ah, ya know. It’s tough.” He’ll be addressing the Dáil later this afternoon – about 20 minutes to five, he reckoned, “after the financial markets have closed”.

No point in asking the Minister for Finance about the ongoing debate on the Moriarty tribunal report. He was dealing with a different sort of stress yesterday and it had nothing to do with talk of new politics and tales of old shenanigans.

Noonan is concerned with the grim reality of our banjaxed banking system. The results of the stress tests into it will be made public today.

And with the release of those figures, the last two days in Leinster House – a surreal interlude in the unfolding drama of our financial situation – will be swept aside.

Not for him the tragi-comic carry on of score-settling and grandstanding over events that happened 16 years ago. Michael Noonan hadn’t the time. Since taking over the finance portfolio, he has been plunged into the heart of a deep financial crisis.

On Tuesday in the Dáil, Gerry Adams intoned that the Moriarty report is the talk of Ireland. Not just of the 26-county statelet, mind, but of the entire island. It seems they’re agog in The Ardoyne and Sandy Row too.

But Noonan is oblivious to it.

He has a lot on his plate. “It’s like being stuck in a big dark hole” he sighed. “I haven’t heard a bit of news.” (We didn’t hear much either over the course of the tribunal debate. There’s 48 hours we’ll never get back.) And with that, he continued on his way.

Meanwhile, his colleagues from all sides were discussing how Denis O’Brien sponsored a hole, with wine, for £4,000 back in old God’s time.

Of course, it is legitimate to argue that the type of corporate cosying-up to political power as addressed in the Moriarty report is what has Minister Noonan in such a difficult situation. If our recent political masters hadn’t been so in thrall to the slick movers and shakers who have brought us to this sorry pass, we wouldn’t be in such a bad state.

That’s what the new Government was arguing in the Dáil yesterday, when it wasn’t trading insults with the remnants of the past government.

The debate served two purposes: it gave Michael Lowry the opportunity to put his rebuttal of its findings on the Dáil record and it gave Enda Kenny and his fledgling administration the chance to pledge they will reform the old political system that Lowry has come to represent.

Lowry’s political future lies behind him and, as such, his overwrought contribution on Tuesday night and his second helping yesterday evening was greeted with icy indifference.

If he ever thought otherwise, he knows now that he has no friends in Leinster House.

He doesn’t care.

“I do not accept Michael Moriarty’s baseless opinions and I will not apologise for something I did not do. I have a life and a career to get back to and I intend to do so.”

Under the cloak of parliamentary privilege, he continues to assert that he has been the victim of a show trial, orchestrated by his nemesis Moriarty. Perhaps had he laid off his viciously personalised attacks on this scrupulously straight judge and stuck to arguing why he believes he was not always given the benefit of fair procedure during the inquiry exercise, he may have won some sympathy.

Instead, he came across as a bitter man, railing against a system it is widely believe he subverted.

In all the waffle, it was Ming – Deputy Ming the formerly Merciless of Roscommon-South Leitrim – who tried to strike some note of balance.

“I suppose if you didn’t know an awful lot about it, you could have been slightly convinced by him yesterday,” he told the Dáil, “but not matter what he says, at the end of the day, it doesn’t add up.”

Given the choice, Ming said he was siding with Moriarty, but to his mind, the whole debate was “a charade”. He couldn’t stomach listening to deputies from the main parties queuing up to castigate Lowry over his connections with big business, given the various scandals that came to light over the past decade.

The martyred Lowry however was an inconsequential figure in the overall scheme of things. Maybe he had one or two valid points, but nobody was prepared to listen to him. Fine Gael was the Opposition’s quarry.

The debate on the tribunal report became a chance for Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and the independent grouping to attack the new Government.

They didn’t get very far because Enda Kenny bent over backwards to project himself as a man of reason, apologetic over past failings and pledging to make things better in the future.

The best Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party could manage was to admonish the Taoiseach, in his best múinteoir voice, for not answering all the questions he was asked because he was forgetting some of them.

“Will you take a note of each question?” he instructed a bemused-looking Enda.

Despite being Mr Reasonable, it didn’t stop the Taoiseach from slinging the mud across the floor with gusto. As for his new Minister for the Environment, Big Phil Hogan, he waded into the fight boots first, attacking Micheál Martin, Gerry Adams and anybody else who dared impugn his good name.

He all but challenged Micheál outside for a fight.

Sinn Féin won the Opposition race to the high moral ground by calling for an all-party motion of censure on Lowry. This was adopted by Enda Kenny, who told the chamber last evening that it would be taken without debate this morning.

Gerry Adams and his party will take the credit. Enda and his party will be spared further Dáil scrutiny of their questionable handling of a fat corporate cheque back in Lowry’s heyday.

It was left to Pat Rabbitte, the Minister for Communications, to wrap up the tribunal talking shop.

Pat concentrated his fire on the Fianna Fáil leader, who has been shipping abuse from all sides and must be feeling shell-shocked after his first few weeks in Opposition.

As Billy Kelleher – one of the FF old guard now – heckled him, Pat looked at him and then Micheál and snorted: “You’re sitting beside a leading graduate of the Academy of Financial Jiggery-Pokery – and he comes in here, puts on his Mother Teresa face and starts lecturing us!”

Micheál has been harrying the Government like an over- medicated terrier. That’s his job now, but he’s not getting it easy from the new incumbents.

Rabbitte tartly noted that the younger ranks of Fianna Fáil deputies were eager to see a changed political system and had been largely supportive of his Government’s promise to change things. Where was their leader’s much vaunted “new politics”, he wondered. It looked and sounded very like the old Fianna Fáil Opposition to him.

But the former Labour leader acknowledged that fine words butter no parsnips. The “acid test” of what has been said by Kenny and his Government over the last two days will be whether or not they implement their programme of change.

They have laid down a very definite marker.

The coming months will see whether they are up to their fine aspirations.

In the meantime, Michael Noonan struggles with the real meaning of stress.

Playtime is over, boys. It’s back to the real world today.

God help us.