ASSUMING Fine Gael and Labour do form what will be effectively a national government, the new Dáil opposition will be proportionally the smallest in the history of the State. But size is not everything. And what its 50-odd TDs (yes, that hyphen is arguably redundant) lack in numbers, they should make up for in entertainment value.
Fianna Fáil alone will be compulsory viewing. That party is now undergoing the most dramatic shift in perspective since Gulliver left Lilliput for Brobdingnag. It will be interesting to see how it adjusts to the new reality. My apologies in advance for the Swiftian vulgarity, but after years of putting out Opposition fires by urinating on them, the newly-dwarfed party may have to carry an umbrella.
Sinn Féin's situation will be interesting too. Arguably, it is only now where it should have been in 2007 or even 2002. In the circumstances, there's a touch of the Norma Desmonds ("I am big. It's the pictures that got smaller") about its greatly increased share of space on the opposition benches: Even so, Sinn Féin has undoubtedly gone fourth (sic) and multiplied since the last election. We can expect plenty of schadenfreudeto be enjoyed at the other republican party's fate. Now that Fianna Fáil's threat of invading the North has receded, for example, perhaps SF will float the possibility of a reverse takeover.
Then there’s Joe Higgins’s second coming to the Dáil. His first was a gift to sketch-writers. Who can forget such classic stand-up moments as the day he welcomed Bertie Ahern’s reported conversion to socialism: “There’s two of us in it, taoiseach – we’ll go down fighting”? Sadly, he went down alone in 2007 and was condemned to exile in the European Parliament, where savage indignation could no longer lacerate his breast (or it could, but we just wouldn’t hear about it as much). Now, however, he’s back. And if he’s back with a vengeance, nobody could blame him.
It’s strange to recall how out-of-touch with mainstream politics Joe’s socialism used to seem, given that his short absence has coincided with the collapse of international capitalism and the forced nationalisation of the banks.
Also, I recall that one of his recurring themes in that first Dáil term was the mistreatment of workers in Gama Construction, the no-frills Turkish company that built some of the Celtic Tiger’s roads. It may have been through championing such thankless causes (the poor road-builders had no votes, after all) that he lost his seat. But of course, in Joe’s absence, the country has gone from Gama to Nama. So if his indignation was savage before this, imagine what it will be like now.
As if all that wasn’t enough, the new opposition will also have Shane Ross, and Mick Wallace, and Ming the Merciful, and Joan Collins, and Healy-Rae 2.0 (the-next-generation) and Richard Boyd Barrett. All human life is there, or near enough. By contrast, despite being more than twice the size of the opposition, the new government may struggle to be half as interesting. Either way, it should be a sketch-writer’s benefit.
IF SOMEof the incoming cohort challenge the Dáil's fusty dress code – or vice versa, as this paper predicted yesterday – all the better. Although the code only requires that one's chosen outfit "reflects the dignity of the House", in practice – for men, at least – this means a jacket and tie. I know, having offended against it once myself.
Not deliberately, it should be said. What happened was that, one day, the newsdesk diverted me at short notice from another assignment, which required casual dress, to cover an Oireachtas committee hearing. And Oireachtas committees being the off-Broadway version of parliamentary business, I thought some relaxation of the code might be allowed.
Au contraire. My jumper-and-shirt ensemble was deemed to have failed the dignity-reflection test, even though, on that day at least, it was marginally more dignified than the committee proceedings. No matter. Such was the consternation caused, I might as well have been wearing only a fig-leaf. After some deliberation, they let watch the hearing in a side room, on a TV monitor. It felt like I was being held in an isolation unit.
CONCERNED READERDavid Finnegan submitted the above photograph, taken on the M1 at Santry. As he says: "It is unbelievable that neither the English nor Irish version is correct". Against which, I would argue that at least the sign demonstrates parity of esteem between the State's first and second official languages. In fact, as a gesture to some of our Northern fellow islanders, who use the road a lot, maybe we should add a third translation – in Ulster-Scots – and misspell that too.
The question, however, is whether this is a sign of the times. And indeed, I fear it may be. Note that, linguistic infelicities aside, the sign is also deficient to the tune of one leg. There seems to be a Yeatsian message here, namely that: “Things fall apart/The center (sic) cannot hold”. Which, incidentally, may also be the long-term thinking of Sinn Féin and the United Left Alliance. If I were the Labour Party in particular, I’d be nervous.