DÁIL SKETCH:THE ELECTIONS spilled over into the Dáil chamber yesterday, with the dramatic allegation by Brian Cowen that Eamon Gilmore is looking for votes.
The Labour leader wanted the Taoiseach to accept his party’s Private Members’ motion, moved last night, to nationalise the banks temporarily.
Gilmore criticised the Government’s banking strategy. “God knows, how many billions you are going to spend in order to buy up the bad debts,” he declared. Indeed, said Gilmore, one commentator had observed that Labour’s Dáil motion was, declaration of war aside, the most important debate the Dáil could have.
Declaring war on Labour, Cowen went on the offensive.
“The suggestion that we are handing over money without seeking a return on that investment is not correct, but it is something the Labour Party continues to portray day-in and day-out . . . because it thinks it gains votes . . . even if it is misinformed,” he declared. “It is all about the Labour Party trying to get votes.”
Gilmore responded with a defensive missile. “It certainly is not.”
That is exactly what it is about, and let us not cod one another,” replied Cowen. Cowen accused Labour of not addressing the issue, “because it does not suit you, ideologically, to address the issue”. If Cowen had invoked the persona of the political bruiser, Gilmore opted for a statesman-like approach. The steps taken to date to deal with the banking crisis had not succeeded, he said.
The choice facing the House, he said, was the Government way or the way advocated in the Labour motion. He urged the Taoiseach to bow to the inevitable and agree to Labour’s motion, putting the banks into public ownership for the period necessary to clean them up and get them back in order.
The restless Fianna Fáil benches were bowing to no Labour inevitability.
“How would Labour clean them up,” asked Frank Fahey. John Cregan weighed in to back up his party colleague’s question. “We would get rid of Fianna Fáil cronies,” said Labour’s Emmet Stagg.
As the interruptions from the Government benches continued, Gilmore remarked that the Taoiseach was lucky to have such advice available to him.
“It is an awful wonder, given the quantum of brain power and financial advice he has on the benches behind him, that he has made such a mess of the banking issue to date,” Gilmore added.
The Taoiseach’s reference to retaining “market-driven values” in banking was too much for Michael D Higgins’s socialist sensitivities.
“Market-driven values . . . market-driven values,” he repeated contemptuously.
During the debate on the Finance Bill, Labour’s Joan Burton, staring less than lovingly at Brian Lenihan, remarked that the House required “more meaningful time in the Dáil” with the Minister for Finance.
“We have to talk this out,” she said, itemising the State’s economic woes.
The Minister shifted uneasily and looked straight ahead, wearing a thunderous expression and clearly not open to any fiscal bonding with his Dublin West constituency colleague.
