Pearse Doherty was rolled out early doors to tee up the afternoon’s main feature.
Like a little amuse-bouche from Sinn Féin, Pearse was before the microphones to provide a taste of the robust Dáil fare to come.
This is a weekly Leinster House ritual for all the political parties.
On Tuesday mornings, before business in the chamber begins, they dispatch spokespeople to the plinth (or under a nearby portico in inclement weather) to outline their priorities for the working week.
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Just one item on the table for everyone this time: the Government’s emergency measures to combat the effects of soaring fuel prices precipitated by Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East.
The unsurprising consensus was that this €250 million package is fairly useless, particularly for people who rely on oil to heat their homes.
Nonetheless, even if the package wasn’t much to write home about, at least it was something.
No thanks to the Government, though.
If Micheál Martin and Simon Harris and all the super-junior ministers had their way, they wouldn’t be giving tuppence to anyone.
Really? With voters giving out yards about the cost of diesel and kerosene and the squeezed middle giving their TDs lackery over the cost of living and those same TDs demanding something be done to ease their constituents’ pain and two bye-elections coming up around the end of May and . . .
Never mind the heavy hints emanating from Merrion Street last week intimating that action would be taken sooner rather than later as the pressure to act grew.
The Government was apparently stiffening its resolve to stand idly by.
Don’t take our word for it.
Here’s Pearse Doherty, tantalising with a pre-Dáil morsel about how Sinn Féin was the hero of the hour, forcing miserly Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to come to heel and introduce at least some measures to partially take the sting out of the energy crisis.
“The Government didn’t want to be in this position,” he informed the media. “They were taken to this position, dragged, kickin’ and screamin’, and because of the pressure we in Sinn Féin have put them under.”
And we thought those days were in the past.
For the last four weeks, said Sinn Féin’s second-in-command in Leinster House, the public watched prices going up as the Government dithered and sat on its hands. And in the end, they produced a package of “half measures”.
Words which couldn’t have been said better by his leader, Mary Lou McDonald, had she said them herself.
Which she did a few hours later in the chamber.
In the meantime, Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke was asked on the lunchtime news why it took the Coalition the guts of four weeks to bring in this emergency package.
Peter, à la Pearse, was the amuse-bouche in advance of Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s appearance at Leaders’ Questions.
The fact that details of the package were only being announced now did not convey the full picture, explained the Minister. Measures “were unfolding and being operationalised during that period of time”.
Not only that, but the Irish Government has moved with great speed compared to other countries in Europe.
“Right now, Italy, Spain and the UK are only trying to operationalise their response.”
Micheál, when his turn came to operationalise in the House, couldn’t agree more.
First though, Mary Lou had to take the shameless level up another notch from Pearse’s initial effort by claiming responsibility again for the “measly” measures.
Despite fuel prices rocketing in the last month, it took massive public anger and “relentless pressure from Sinn Féin” to get the Government to do something.
Snorts of laughter went up at the Sinn Féin leader’s chutzpah.
Then, following on from Pearse, Mary Lou got on to the kickin’ and screamin’ again.
“Your package today had to be dragged out of you.”
The Taoiseach went for the obvious when framing his opening response.
There’s a war on.
The world is in a state of chassis and “this is a moment of great instability and uncertainty”, he declared. “The war in the Middle East has created, without question, the greatest oil-supply shock ever in the history of the markets.”
With great willpower, Micheál didn’t go full Cork soprano and cry “But I didn’t start it, like!”
His Government is proceeding with caution because nobody knows what might be around the corner, so that means “targeted, temporary and affordable measures for now”.
With “flexibility”.
By the evening news, Transport Minister Darragh O’Brien was out on the flexibility front, stressing that the measures outlined may only be for starters.
“Stingy and mean and detached,” complained Mary Lou. Imagine leaving households depending on home-heating oil in the lurch?
They wouldn’t do that to big builders or developers looking for help, she charged.
“How very, very telling. How very, very Fine Gael.”
And how very, very Sinn Féin, countered Micheál.
“The only party of late that has been courting bankers and developers and every sort of corporate financial operation is yourselves, particularly in the United States, where you’ve raised a hell of a lot of money from developers and from builders. So really, spare lecturing everybody else about fundraising from developers and bankers and everybody because you have been doing it on a serial basis for many, many years in the United States, Northern Ireland, the UK and elsewhere.”
“And Australia,” murmured Minister of State Jerry Buttimer, from the row behind.
Micheál also took a swipe at Sinn Féin for not adopting a similar approach with the party’s two Ministers holding finance portfolios in Northern Ireland, where “the amount pledged to help people cope with the energy crisis there has so far amounted to £30 a head”.
This was his first day back in the chamber following his St Patrick’s Day trip to Washington and that Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump.
If he was hoping for any plaudits from across the floor for his much-praised stint in Trump’s bully chair, there were none.
At Leaders’ Questions, along with Mary Lou McDonald, Labour’s Ivana Bacik, Cian O’Callaghan of the Social Democrats and Michael Collins of Independent Ireland were united in their view that the measures do not go far enough.
Although we hear that at the Cabinet meeting, Tánaiste Simon Harris made a point of praising the Taoiseach for his White House performance, telling him he did very well for the country and for Europe.
Some reckoned he was still in shock when he got to the Dáil.
“This package is about €250 million. In the UK, it’s £53 million,” he said when he got there.
“Fifty-three.”
Now, Micheál isn’t one to brag, but “I’d say if you go around the Europe capitals, you will not see a packet as big as this one”.
Obviously he picked up something from his time with the Donald after all.
