DAIL SKETCH:WHAT A lovely little cameo at the top of the steps. Three Green Party members have just voted confidence in Willie O'Dea. Ciarán Cuffe, Mary White and Paul Gogarty look sheepish after their short walk through the lobbies. GoGo, in particular, wears the expression of a man who is deeply conflicted.
Batt O’Keeffe passes, and as he does, he slaps Gogarty on the back. Well done, boy.
Other Fianna Fáil heavyweights smile and murmur approving words to the trio. Says it all. The Green Party deputies have been wearing their heavy hearts on their sleeves for too long. It means absolutely nothing. They’ve worn out their “Look at Us, We’re Suffering Inner Turmoil” act. From the constipated face of Eamon Ryan, delegated to sit through the farcical Defence of O’Dea, to the rest of the unhappy campers who slid through the lobby, the sight of the Greens doing their angst-ridden routine yet again fooled nobody.
For the previous 90 minutes, the Government had put on a juvenile display of parish pumpery which would have brought a blush to the florid cheeks of the worst sort of councillor. It was Ballymagash shamefully brought to life, with Willie O’Dea the leading player. As Dermot Ahern sniped and sniggered at his side, Willie, who had serious charges to answer, yelped indignantly from under his moustache before he rose to deliver a speech which was short on explanation and a full-blooded exercise in mud slinging.
Never mind the Opposition allegations of perjury: “you can’t prove nuttin” was the measured defence from senior counsel Brian Lenihan on his colleague’s behalf. There was no attempt from anybody to deny that their Willie had been caught, bang to rights, spreading malicious rumours about a political rival. In fact, as the Dáil debated a hastily arranged confidence vote in O’Dea, the Government appeared to view the entire exercise as a joke. Then the utterly unrepentant O’Dea had the cheek to finish his outrageous contribution with a plea for “some level of propriety and fairness”.
Such a delicious irony. Would this be the same Willie O’Dea who swore a false affidavit to the High Court which resulted in a judge refusing an application from the injured party for an injunction restraining the Minister from repeating lies against him until his defamation case came to court? As a result, Sinn Féin’s Maurice Quinlivan ran in the local elections with Willie’s claim that he part-owned a brothel hanging out there in the ether. In the end, the Minister settled and paid a sum of money in compensation to Quinlivan. And as Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin noted with some satisfaction yesterday, his man still managed to get elected.
It was an astonishing episode.
But for all O’Dea’s unedifying bluster, he was only taking a lead from his boss, who took the chance to put the boot into Enda Kenny in a direct contradiction of his exhortations to play the ball, not the man.
Here’s what the Taoiseach had to say about the “despicable” charges of perjury that some people in the Dáil and Seanad have had the temerity to level against his Willie: “I want to say clearly that it does not serve this Oireachtas well for people to throw around or imply ill-founded allegations of perjury in a coarse attempt to secure political advantage.”
However, as Biffo’s robust defence of his Minister shows, it’s an entirely different thing to throw around false allegations that a person is running a brothel.
Enda Kenny – the Real Enda, as opposed to Continuity Enda, which he publicly decommissioned last week in the wake of the George Lee debacle – was really rather good as he skewered Fianna Fáil on its commitment to standards at the highest level.
He scoffed at Willie O’Dea’s protestations that he set about correcting his false statement as soon as he knew he erred, declaring he only changed his story in the face of the “irrefutable proof of his own voice and of his own deceit”. He even threw Bertie Ahern’s whiparounds into the mix.
Then he set upon the Greens, present in the form of Eamon Ryan, who earlier read an extremely tepid justification of why his party would be backing O’Dea. (Essentially, he repeated Willie’s explanation and sniffed it was good enough for them.) Joan Burton said later that he spoke like a man wearing a peg on his nose.
The awkward silence across the floor as the Fine Gael leader got stuck in spoke volumes. Finally, Brian Lenihan mounted a charge.
“You haven’t produced a shred of evidence yet . . . Unlike you, we don’t assassinate people.” Brian conveniently forgot the experience suffered by his own father at the lethal hand of Charlie Haughey.
“Guttersnipe politics!” bellowed Dermot Ahern. “Where’s Gorgeous George?”
For a while, it looked like no member of the Green Party would show up. Chief Whip Pat Carey looked like he was about to have a nervous breakdown, before Eamon finally sloped in.
Labour’s Joan Burton did everyone a service by reading the transcript of the taped interview in which Willie made his malicious allegations. She then followed this by reading out what Willie swore a number of weeks later to the High Court.
It was damning stuff.
Eamon Ryan looked like he was going to burst into tears.
The place was in uproar. Then Willie did his tribal thing, attacking the “Blueshirts” before invoking the name of the late Jerry McCabe and then throwing in a reference to allegations of paedophilia surrounding Gerry Adams’s brother.
He attacked Sinn Féin with such gusto one had to wonder if Willie thought he did anything wrong at all in defaming one of their members.
Meanwhile, the Greens continue to cover themselves in glory. After the vote, Senator Dan unburdened himself on his Twitter page. “Not happy with what happened today. Believe we bounced into supporting motion. Next week would have been fine . . . As regards to Minister O’Dea, I don’t have confidence in him. His situation is compromised. Probably be a few chapters in this story yet.”
Ten out of 10 for neck.
