THE PACKED European Parliament chamber struck former Gaelic Athletic Association president Seán Kelly as something like a larger version of the GAA congress, he said.
The first-time Fine Gael MEP for Ireland South was settling into his ninth-floor office shortly after the opening session of the new Parliament in Strasbourg yesterday afternoon.
Kicking off his shoes, he said: “The closest thing in my experience would be the GAA congress. The European Parliament is something similar, except you have 736 members.
“There’s instant translation which is great. They could do with that in the GAA congress with the different dialects, fellows from the North can’t understand fellows from Kerry and vice versa.”
Mr Kelly said he was struck by the number of women parliamentarians – 35 per cent, according to its press service. “That’s something different from the GAA congress, you’d be lucky to have half a dozen,” he said.
Unfortunately for Ireland’s only new woman MEP, the Labour Party yesterday issued a statement announcing that Nessa Childers had “taken his seat” in the European Parliament.
The MEP for Ireland East said she was busy brushing up on the French she learned as a child from her father who, she said, had worked as a tour guide in Paris (Erskine Childers was also a President of Ireland). She expected an intense focus on the Irish MEPs within the parliament as the second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty approached.
For the former Socialist TD Joe Higgins, the hemicycle seemed to compare unfavourably with his previous place of work, Leinster House. Apparently wistful for a bit of Bertie baiting, he said: “There isn’t a government to hold responsible in the same way, you can’t put pressure on a taoiseach or a minister.”
Arriving at the parliament building in the rain yesterday morning, Labour’s South MEP Alan Kelly had his soundbite at the ready. “I’m looking forward to the term, looking forward to doing my best for the workers, the farmers, the fishermen,” he said.
Things did not continue so smoothly for Mr Kelly, however. The key jammed in the door of his office and he could not lock it.
No one could really call Pat “The Cope” Gallagher a new kid in the block. However, on his return to Strasbourg, he was warning against Yes-side complacency in the second Lisbon Treaty referendum. “If you had a referendum in the morning on going to heaven there’d be 20-25 per cent against.”
