Joe puts us off our tea as Enda tries to shimmy out of tights spot

D�IL SKETCH:FINE GAEL – Men in Tights. What an appalling image. Well thank you very much, Deputy Joe Higgins, for planting it in our minds. Put us right off our tea: we went down to the Dáil canteen after Leaders' Questions and nearly fainted at the sight of the mixed grill. It's bad enough some of the Cabinet think it's fine to go cycling around Ireland in Lycra of a weekend. At least you have to be halfway up a mountain to witness them. But Joe took the ginger nuts yesterday.

Deputy Higgins has been finding it difficult in the new Dáil. With Bertie Ahern off the pitch, he might reasonably have hoped to return to Leinster House as The Only Socialist in the Village. Instead, he has to contend with a young breed of like-minded firebrands who have raised the bar in the metaphor department.

So the leader of the Socialist Party pulled out all the stops yesterday when he rose to excoriate the Taoiseach over his poor handling of the Roscommon hospital controversy. Ladies hosiery was mentioned.

Fianna Fáil kick-started the controversy over two weeks ago when Micheál Martin produced a letter from James Reilly pledging to continue the service. Enda batted for his man, while insisting he hadn’t issued any personal promises during the campaign.

But this weekend, he was dragged right into the middle of the row when a recording of him giving just such a guarantee was produced. Having beguiled a weary electorate with talk of a new, more open style of politics, the Taoiseach was caught out.

Cornered, the Taoiseach brazened it out in the Dáil yesterday and blamed the whole episode on “The Annunciation”. (This cut no ice with Joe Higgins, who was once a seminarian in Minnesota and knows all about The Annunciation.) When Enda said what he said, “it was a public address on a street in Roscommon” and he was speaking as the leader of Fine Gael. What the cheering crowd heard from him was “the enunciation of party policy”. Different thing entirely from a personal commitment.

They thought a nice man called Enda Kenny was telling them what they wanted to hear, but they didn’t understand that a political party was in front of them on the soapbox.

Some people might be confused by this, but Enda is clear in his mind. His defence is one advanced regularly in District Courts by solicitors trying to explain the actions of a wayward client: “He wasn’t himself at the time, your honour.” No. Enda wasn’t himself. Of this, he is certain.

Then, when he got into power, Hiqa told him the hospital was unsafe and he had to act accordingly. The Opposition refused to buy his explanation. The Taoiseach refused their entreaties to correct the record.

Joe Higgins was incensed. “Do you realise what a contemptible figure you cut today?” he told Enda, who was in ex-party mode and appearing as himself.

Using Hiqa as an alibi was pathetic and on a par with “the dog ate my homework” excuse, said Joe. But it was Enda’s invocation of Fine Gael policy to explain away his promise to the people of Roscommon that riled him most.

Party policy was his “new flexible friend” to explain away promises made before the election. Former MEP Higgins elaborated. A little too much.

Party policy was “the new Fine Gael brand of pantyhose to cover every possible emergency and every size and form of emergency”. Pantyhose? Never in Ireland? Tights, Joe, we call them tights.

Joe ruined the rest of Leaders’ Questions for us as we struggled with visions of Enda and his troupe in tights.

We couldn’t escape from clothes yesterday. Fine Gael’s Mary Mitchell O’Connor, known for her diamante encrusted tights, was mentioned in dispatches by three male deputies from the Technical group. Their off-colour comments were caught when the Dáil microphones were left on during a vote.

The three fashion plates – Mick Wallace, Ming Flanagan and Shane Ross – were discussing the proposed dress code for Oireachtas members and Wallace observed that deputy Mitchell O’Connor had “toned it down a bit” with her outfit yesterday. She favours bright colours and is always immaculately turned out in the Dáil.

Mick – that icon of pink, polo-shirted dishevelled chic – was somewhat toned down himself yesterday, wearing a pink-tinged collarless shirt. He didn’t refer to Mary by name, preferring to call her a character from The Muppet Show.

“Who’s that?” asked Shane Ross.

Ming was happy to help. “That Mary Mitchell O’Connor one . . . the one who drove off the plinth.” (The Dún Laoghaire deputy famously drove down the plinth on her first day in Leinster House.) Fashionista Ming added: “They’d want to ban her wearing pink.” A chortling Ross remarked that Deputy Mitchell O’Connor was “nothing sensational” yesterday, given that “she normally wears the most garish colours.” Then the microphones were turned off.

These three little sexist pigs will have to do a lot of huffing and puffing today if they want to avoid bringing the wrath of Leinster House down on their heads.

Muppets.