That dust-up in the Dail yesterday

You perhaps watched the gathering of TDs in the Dail yesterday. If you did, your memory will reproduce several images. Prominent among them will be the Ceann Comhairle, who stood glaring at the TDs yelling incoherently at one another. The CC is something I’ve seen before – a teacher in a nightmare of indiscipline, with those who should be doing what she told them doing the very opposite.

Shorter in duration but equally unforgettable is that of Michael Lowry smiling. It was for  Lowry that Micheál Martin went through this afternoon of shock and shell. In return, Lowry gave the two fingers  and a wide smile to the Opposition, after Micheál and other government TDs passed a motion saying that Lowry and his, um, Rat Pack should be given speaking time in the Dail as though they were Opposition members, whereas they are vital to the continuation of the present government.

Let me come clean. If all this was about eight minutes of speaking time in the Dail, as An Taoiseach maintained, then I’d see it as a minor matter and certainly not deserving of all this shouting and roaring. But I suspect there’s more to this. Mary Lou McDonald, I think it was, wondered what hold Lowry had on the Taoiseach. After all, Martin in 2011, in the wake of the Moriarty tribunal, said that  Lowry “wants the House to put aside the report and believe instead a series of explanations that, in fact, explain nothing…”  Micheál in short saw Lowry as “profoundly corrupt”.

But except Lowry has had a serious transformation on the road from Tipperary to the Dail, there’s a very curious contrast between Micheál’s words then and his words now.

Maybe Mary Lou McDonald got nearest the truth when she wondered aloud just what was the hold Lowry had on the Taoiseach. But she should know what that hold is. It’s the life-and-death hold that Lowry and his group are capable of bringing down the government should they choose to.

As Dr Johnson said once: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

We may expect to see Micheál to continue to concentrate