Dictionaries shed no light on an awfully bad word entirely

DÁIL SKETCH:CHAIRMAN OF the Fine Gael parliamentary party Pádraic McCormack had little sleep on Wednesday night. He was reading dictionaries and smarting from a rebuke from Taoiseach Brian Cowen.

His agony was evident at yesterday’s Order of Business.

He claimed that a remark by the Taoiseach on the previous day had been very damaging to his reputation. “He referred to me as a ‘gurrier’,” said McCormack.

“I have looked up the Oxford English dictionary and the Anglo-Irish dictionary and noted there is no explanation for the word.” Oozing injured innocence, he added: “Therefore, it must be an awfully bad word entirely.”

His party colleague Dr James Reilly wondered if he had come across the acronym “Biffo” in his dictionary reading. Reilly had, no doubt, the translation “Big, Intelligent, Famous, From Offaly” in mind. Or was it something else? McCormack “respectfully” suggested to Tánaiste Mary Coughlan that she get the Taoiseach to withdraw the remark.

McCormack observed that some people in his native county might not understand what the word “gurrier” meant. “I do not even know what it means, but I know it was said in a very derogatory manner,” he added.

The Galway West TD’s recollection was not entirely accurate. Cowen had, in fact, elevated him to an exalted state of gurrierism. On Wednesday, irritated by McCormack’s heckling, Cowen said: “I should be allowed to reply without interruption and not have to listen to some of Deputy McCormack’s guff. He is the gurrier-in-chief when it comes to that sort of thing.”

At the time, the Taoiseach was defending himself from Eamon Gilmore’s charge of “economic treason”.

Yesterday, Ceann Comhairle Seamus Kirk said he had not heard the remark amid the “stormy exchanges”.

McCormack said he had heard it, adding that “worse still, it is repeated in today’s media”.

The media coverage had clearly been a cruel blow.

Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey felt his pain. “The deputy is such a sensitive soul,” he said.

As he sat down, tongue still firmly planted in his cheek, McCormack remarked: “I will put it on my election literature.”

And so he might. It is always a good day for a Fine Gael TD when he is called “gurrier-in-chief” by a Fianna Fáil Taoiseach.

Labour’s Emmet Stagg claimed that Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin had called his party colleague Joan Burton a “felon-setter”.

The Ceann Comhairle again pleaded an inability to hear above the din.

He could only adjudicate on matters he had heard, he said.

Stagg observed that he was “aware of the diplomatic deafness that normally afflicts people given the position of chairman”.

The Government later bid a hasty retreat from the Dáil when it voted through a two-week Easter holiday. A week in which all sides had agreed on the dire state of the economy, and widespread public anger, culminated in a row over yet another Dáil break.

It may have prompted Fine Gael’s Denis Naughten to offer a simple explanation for the Government’s withdrawal of troops from Chad.

“They are needed on the streets of this country,” he said.