“Put ’em up! Put ’em up! Just you and me, Enda. Mano a mano.”

That’s more or less what the Fianna Fáil leader said to the Taoiseach yesterday. He’s absolutely spoiling for a fight.

But it doesn’t look like he’s going to get it. Micheál Martin is starting early. There may be some time to go to the general election, but he’s already trying to lure Enda Kenny out into the open so he can get a good crack at him.

This is all, you understand, in the interest of democracy. It goes, as Micheál pointed out, “to the heart of democratic revolution”.

Democratic revolution. The Taoiseach had a great devotion to it before the business of power wore him down. But the opposition is not inclined to let him forget.

Micheál, in particular.

Where, for example, is that great debate he promised on the reform of the Seanad? A big report was commissioned, completed and delivered to the Government. Then Enda called the party leaders together in June and they had a big meeting about what they might do next.

It was at this point that they began to worry about the Taoiseach’s commitment to the cause. He didn’t seem that bothered about it. Micheál said the meeting was “farcical”.

Gerry Admas backed him up, recalling that the whole thing was “incoherent”.

Both men remembered that the Taoiseach had been hit with a terrible “wallop” by the electorate when his wish to have the Seanad abolished was rejected in a referendum.

They have now concluded – going by the useless meeting and lack of any follow-up from the Government after it – that the Taoiseach is still smarting and couldn’t care less now about the Upper House.

“It seems to me that since you got the wallop, or the people said no, that you’ve thrown your hat at it and you don’t seem to really want to progress any reforms,” remarked Micheál during questions to the Taoiseach.

But it’s all part of an overall pattern which, he says, points to Enda’s reluctance to engage in public debate on important issues.

The same accusations haunted him during the 2011 election, not that they did him much harm.

Martin had an example to hand: TV3 has asked them to do a head-to-head debate during the campaign.

“I am prepared to do that debate. You are not,” he reminded the Taoiseach, before picking him up on his reaction.

“You just sniggered there and you laughed,” said Micheál, just short of saying he was going to run off and tell the teacher about him.

“Because your view is if you avoid those debates, it’s better.”

The Fianna Fáil leader is very disappointed. The veteran Fianna Fáil man recognised something in Enda.

Cute hoor

“You belong to a sort of cute hoor form of politics that says, you know, that says, the more you duck and dive the less . . .”

The Ceann Comhairle cut him off at the mention of the word “hoor”.

“Not very parliamentary,” tut-tutted Seán Barrett. “Not very parliamentary.”

Micheál begged to differ.

“Well, it was meant in the most parliamentary way,” he replied.

Across the floor, the Taoiseach tried, and failed, to look hurt. Labour Junior Minister Sean Sherlock rallied on his Coalition partner’s behalf.

“You’re displaying an awful nasty streak today,” he said prissily to the FF leader, who tried to explain as “a political scientist” that he had merely used a phrase used in many works of political science.

“That’s a nasty streak coming out. It’s unbecoming,” insisted Sherlock, trying his best to sound angry and scandalised. Then again, all Labour can be these days is angry and scandalised, since details of an internal poll were leaked to the media.

Although now, senior figures are rushing to say there was never a poll in the first place, so its puzzling as to why they were so upset in the first place.

Cute hoorism apart – and fair play to a longstanding member of the three-term Fianna Fáil administration for recognising it again, Martin just wants the Taoiseach to ventilate his views.

It’s good to talk, believes Micheál.

So how about it? Any chance the Taoiseach might come and fight his corner? Nope.

Enda treated his rival with disdain. “I’m not sure that that rambling contribution deserves any kind of response, Ceann Comhairle. Are we to have, suddenly, a revelation here in the Oireachtas that the greatest debater of all time has arrived?”

Micheál did a double take. “Sorry? Wha?”

The Taoiseach piled on the sarcasm. “Deputy Micheál Martin, who refused to accept any responsibility for the ministry that he held, and then suddenly, everybody should be cowering away under the benches because they are going to get devoured by this wonderful new political scientist who knows all the answers to all the questions.”

But Micheál said he wasn’t just referring to the Taoiseach refusing to debate with him. “I mean anybody, Taoiseach. Anybody!” Enda didn’t want to know.

Presumptuous

Then they got back to discussing the Seanad. The Taoiseach said that the time to implement the report on its future will be after the election.

He hopes, God willing, that he may be there to do that job.

He eyed Micheál. “Now, I’m not going to be as presumptuous as you.” Fianna Fáil seems to want an overall majority “as an individual party and not associated with anybody... So that assumes that you intend to lead your party to an overall majority in the election in the spring. Good luck to ye!”

Then Micheál said the Taoiseach was in cahoots with RTÉ. “RTÉ is entitled to its own opinion,” shrugged Enda.

Two more Dáil weeks until Christmas.