“YOU’RE making an absolute holy show of yourselves,” Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy told Deputies during chaotic scenes over speaking rights in the Dáil last week.
What with Michael Lowry giving a two-fingered gesture to the good people of Ireland and opposition TDs roaring “shame, shame, shame” as government backbenchers legged it out the door, it was like something straight out of The Muppet Show.
In a debacle filled with shouting, interruptions, and allegations of misogyny, it was certainly livelier than some of the less raucous gatherings of Limerick City and County Council, but only just.
Shur, Verona Murphy wouldn’t last five minutes out at the monthly lynchings with that feral mob in the Adare Rathkeale District. They wouldn’t be long wiping that grin off Lowry’s gob either, I can tell you.
But as comical, shameful, and downright embarrassing as the slagging match in Leinster House proved to be, it also raised questions for me around talking time at our often long-winded local authority get-togethers here in Limerick.
A wise lad once said, “the less men think, the more they talk”, but this concept goes way over the heads of these rambling boyos in the Dooradoyle Council bunker.
Maybe Limerick’s kings of the Panto, the wonderful Myles Breen and Richard Lynch, would give them a couple of classes in Merchants Quay on stagecraft?
Now, don’t get me wrong, most of our local representatives conduct themselves in a professional manner and are well capable of getting their points across intelligibly and succinctly in the Council chamber.
But others, more verbose and possessing the gift of the gab, are a whole other beast altogether.
Whether they are lonely at home and want to make a day out of it, have misplaced aspirations of treading the boards, or simply kissed the Blarney Stone a few too many times, who knows?
The three-minute talking time rule doesn’t always apply, and certainly doesn’t apply to everyone. And while some districts can get their business sorted proficiently in an hour or two, other district meetings you might have to consider bringing a packed lunch and an overnight bag.
One of our former Limerick councillors now in the big leagues up in Merrion Street got caught up in the fracas in the Dáil when it all kicked off last week. Independent Ireland TD Richard O’Donoghue, a straight-talking no-nonsense sort, even had to be kept apart from Tipperary’s Mattie McGrath by an usher.
The County Limerick politician hit out at McGrath’s alleged double standards and wasn’t happy to see him smiling and laughing with fellow Tipperary TD Michael Lowry as pandemonium erupted.
A man not afraid of rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty, O’Donoghue rowed in earlier in the year to help defuse the speaking rights impasse in the Dáil. After this particular squabble over speaking time, widespread chaos and conflict ensued as negotiations to elect a new Taoiseach were pushed back numerous times.
O’Donoghue told this publication in the aftermath of that shocking display of his own part in disabling the heated deadlock. He did this, he claimed, by helping to negotiate the joining-up of Aontú’s two TDs – Peadar Tóibín and Paul Lawless – to the Independent Technical Group.
What our politicians in Leinster House, and their counterparts in Merchants Quay, need to remember, though, is fairly simple: if you want a quiet life and to get things accomplished, you don’t talk to your friends, you talk to your enemies.
