Alarms ring out as Mary Lou and Brendan blaze

Courage undimmed and with not a thought to their personal safety, they courageously battled through the tumult.

Close on the centenary of the Rising, this handful of Leinster House heroes displayed a fortitude not seen since the GPO in 1916.

Such bravery amidst the relentless sniping.

Hearts swelled with pride – and no small amount of concern – when they refused to abandon their stations as acrid smoke rose from increasingly vicious exchanges in the Dáil chamber.

Brendan Howlin was smouldering.

Mary Lou McDonald ablaze.

Yet they battled on.

It was shocking.

Brian Hayes was so traumatised he was unable to speak. All he could do was sit beside his senior officer Howlin and gallantly nod.

And still the fire alarm rang.

Fianna Fáil’s Seán Fleming bravely shuffled his papers and stayed in his seat. Behind him, Independent TD for Kerry South Tom Fleming remained unmoved by the heat and noise. Although there’s nothing new in that.

Did they budge? They did not.

We haven’t had such a thrilling session in a long time.

Then the noise stopped and word came through of some sort of technical fault in the system: a false alarm. It originated in the Oireachtas creche, apparently.

(This is the second creche, across the road from Leinster House in Kildare Street, and quite different from the main creche, which is also known as the Members’ Bar.)

Emergency over, so? Not in the chamber, where the Howlin/McDonald bombardment continued.

They tore strips off each other. They hadn’t given a moment’s heed to the evacuation bell when it was going like the clappers outside, so they weren’t likely to cease hostilities now that they could take full advantage of the silence.

The conflict centred on the proposed Croke Park agreement. Mary Lou thinks it’s a terrible deal, declaring that the Government and some union leaders are protecting comfortable high earners while pickpocketing the pay of low- and middle- income workers.

“You didn’t even read the document before coming to your venomous conclusion,” spat Brendan, accusing the Sinn Féin deputy leader of “a shocking and shabby abuse of people who had worked hard to represent their members”. Furthermore, she had taken to the airwaves to denounce the agreement within an hour of the talks’ conclusion and had her mind made up before the document was even published. Mary Lou was incensed at such a notion.

The Minister for Public Expenditure explained the deal was a complex one, reached by competent negotiators and it was now up to public service workers to make their judgment.“I ask deputies not to use this House as a bully pit in terms of charging one way or the other on this,” he pleaded.

Bully pit? That’s a new one on us. Did he mean a bullring? Anyway, the mere sight of Brendan Howlin, with Minister of State Hayes in the adjoining seat, was certainly proving a red rag to Mary Lou, who was charging off in all directions.

And she was having the same effect on Brendan.

He lambasted Sinn Féin’s approach to economics, by way of the party leader’s recent trip to America.

“In your imaginary world or bubble, everybody lives on the average industrial wage, but you have a lifestyle that no average industrial worker in this country can aspire to. That fantasy land is hollow.” McDonald let fly over the huge pensions paid to former taoisigh and ministers – an uncomfortable subject for the Government at the best of times.

Howlin hit standard default mode, otherwise known as the lawyers. The Attorney General had advised that “proportionate reductions” could be applied to existing pensions, but it had to be taken into account that pension benefits are generally regarded as “vested property rights”. He had done as much as he could do, within the legal constraints.

Not so, argued Mary Lou. She noted the Government had no qualms messing with IBRC’s property rights when rushing through legislation to wind up the bank. She threw in a few tasty names to spice up the argument – Bertie Ahern, Charlie McCreevy, Dick Spring, Michael Woods, Brian Cowen – along with the size of their pensions.

As the rollcall of the €100,000-plus pensioners unwound, she levelled a stinging charge against the Labour Minister and his coalition Government: “I don’t think you’re politically willing to take on this matter.” Brendan fumed. He dismissed her “back of the lorry speech” and her party’s “nihilism, negativity and destructive views”. They are “willing our country to fail”, he thundered, and the voters will realise this.

As they blazed away at each other, there was no chance of a truce springing up.

The fire alarm didn’t stop them. It was the second such warning of the afternoon. Leinster House was cleared for the first – a reluctance to move marked the next one.

The incident recalled the time Fianna Fáil senator Terry Leydon lit a scented candle in his office and set fire to a wastepaper bin in the process, sparking a widescale evacuation of the complex.

Given the day that was in it, some jokers were suggesting that Senator Rónán Mullen, a former spokesman for the Dublin archdiocese, had been lighting slips of paper in his office in an effort to experience how it might feel when the smoke turns white.