DAIL SKETCH:THE GOVERNMENT and the banks – what an odious couple

Wouldn’t you just die if they invited themselves around for dinner? Or at the very least, invent a sudden death in the family? First, there would be the roaring and shouting and incessant mewling from the Government. (An improvement, if the Tánaiste is to be believed, only achieved after months of counselling.) Then there would be the gluttony of the insatiable banks, making an already intolerable situation worse by their constant demands to have the fridge restocked. You’d have to lock the cupboards and nail down the comestibles.

Not a pretty pair.

Then there’s the awful child – Nama Biffo-Banks. Front runner, we believe, for lead role in an upcoming remake of The Omen. Less said the better.

But you daren’t say a bad word against young Nama when the proud parents are within earshot. They both adore Nama Biffo-Banks and will broach no criticism of their demon tot.

The couple would probably arrive with their eldest in tow, too, now that she’s out of rehab. The Tánaiste introduced this unfortunate girl, clearly unsteady on her feet, to the public again yesterday.

God love her, but Joo Jilijence is still being carried out.

Worse still, during leaders’ questions, Coughlan revealed on two separate occasions that Ms Jiligence “has been done”. Under the circumstances, it was rather cruel of the Opposition to laugh, but that’s what they do now whenever Joo Jiligence is mentioned by the Government.

Talk about a dysfunctional family.

Calamity Coughlan was in charge because pater familias Cowen is in New York at the UN Summit on Climate Change. She’ll be in charge in the Dáil today too, which should cheer Messers Kenny and Gilmore no end.

But back to the Government-banks alliance. It sounds like a match made in hell – or under cover of darkness in the Department of Finance one night last September. Both parties seem to believe they have the upper hand in the marriage.

Coughlan didn’t do very well in putting the Government’s case. In fact, by the time she had finished, one couldn’t help concluding that the bankers are wearing the trousers in their less than temporary little arrangement.

Take the issue of the availability of bank credit to small businesses. As the Opposition saw it yesterday, in return for the taxpayers saving the failed banks by pouring untold billions of their money into their coffers, the banks were to start lending again. This is what the Government said would happen.

Enda Kenny reminded Coughlan of what the Minister for Finance said after he threw them the lifeline last year: “We are now deeply embedded in the banking sector.” But not so, it appears.

“We will continue to be vociferous in working with the banks to make sure that credit is made available as quickly as possible,” said the Tánaiste.

In other words, the Government keeps shouting at the banks in the hope that, some day, they might actually heed them.

And the banks, should they so wish, can keep ignoring them.

So to the banks. Where the Opposition was concerned yesterday, that was chiefly Anglo Irish Bank. Anglo is voracious.

Never mind how many billions the taxpayer/Government has poured into the outfit already. They will have to pour many more billions into Anglo to recapitalise it. How many? Mary wouldn’t say, except to say they would pay whatever it takes. It could be 10 billion, for all she knows.

In fact, at one stage during leader’s questions, she seemed to altogether forget that Anglo Irish Bank had actually been nationalised.

But have no fear.

“We are very cognisant of the need to protect the taxpayer,” she said, before proudly reintroducing her Government’s eldest to polite society.

“That’s why Joo Jiligence has been done by the professionals on our behalf to ensure people that the best decisions are made.”

Eh, that would be the professionals who have us in the pickle we’re in at the moment, would it?

Fine Gael’s Michael Noonan had no time for the Government, and even less for the bankers. “If lying was an Olympic sport, we could put out a team of bankers and win gold for Ireland.”

Vociferous and voracious – the Government and the banks.

Well matched.