DÁIL SKETCH:SOCIALIST PARTY TD Joe Higgins issued a stern warning in the Dáil yesterday.

A herd of elephants was stampeding from Malin Head to Mizen Head, he said.

Fianna Fáil TDs winced. The Mahon tribunal report had been out for just under an hour and images were no doubt conjured up of a massive hunt for errant Soldiers of Destiny.

But Higgins, to Fianna Fáil’s relief, was using a metaphor for the “massive revolt by decent people” against the household charge. Higgins suggested to Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore that he was suffering from a “Marie Antoinette scale of delusion” on the issue.

Fianna Fáil kept its head down, knowing that its officer board would meet later to consider the fallout from Mahon, leading to some inevitable political beheading.

Higgins then moved on to the report, suggesting that it would remind people of the enormous greed and corruption of a tiny elite. As Fianna Fáil TDs shifted uneasily in their seats, there was a rare moment of agreement between Gilmore and the Socialist Party TD. “Deputy Higgins is correct in stating that the matters the tribunal was asked to investigate are not unrelated to the difficulties this country faces today.”

Gilmore referred to “a financial institution which was the piggy bank for the property bubble that brought the country to its knees”.

Then it was back to the household charge and the inevitable collapse of the brief Gilmore-Higgins détente.

Gilmore claimed that following Higgins’s advice would mean the country running out of money.

He recalled the influence of the militant left on British politics.

“The only occasion on which the deputy’s people ran anything was in the 1980s, when they ran the city of Liverpool,” thundered Gilmore. “The city ran out of money.” One Friday afternoon, he added, when there was no money to pay the wages of the gravediggers, the road workers and other employees, “the deputy’s people were obliged to hire taxis to deliver P45s to those individuals”. Higgins observed: “The Tánaiste should take the advice he offered to others two weeks ago and take his head out of the archives.” Gilmore shot back that he had another link for Higgins in respect of a matter not unconnected to the tribunal.

“His people in Liverpool were also subsequently found to be corrupt.” Higgins observed that the Tánaiste’s “desperation” had gone too far.

Entering the fray, People before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett asked: “What about the Tánaiste’s people in the former Soviet Union?” Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae outlined a scenario whereby Ministers and TDs would be looking skywards because of the theft of scrap and precious metals.

“Must we wait until the roof has been stolen from this building and Government Buildings before the Government introduces legislation?” In one of the rare positive notes of the day, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter issued a statement reminding people that Summer Time would come their way on Sunday with clocks and watches put forward one hour.

Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil’s political winter of discontent continues.