Miriam Lord: TDs can do seismic but they don’t like Mondays

Three days on and Leinster House had regained its composure.

The difference between the atmosphere last Friday, when the reality of the Brexit result was still sinking in, and the mood yesterday, was huge.

“There has been a political earthquake in the UK, the consequences of which will take some time to work out,” the Taoiseach told the House, which was no longer wobbling with worried TDs braced between the door frames for safety’s sake.

It was a different kind of shock.

A weekend on from that unsettling day, and the shock was back to default setting: seismic.

They can deal with seismic shock in the Dáil. There has been a vast upheaval on the international political landscape, one which will have particularly serious consequences for this country. Our politicians spent the day making statements about it.

Because seismic, they can do.

Genuine though, proves that things are really serious.

Britain’s narrow vote to leave the EU is one of the biggest events to happen in Europe since the last world war. Ireland stands to ship some very heavy collateral damage as a result of the decision.

The Dáil was recalled a day early to contemplate this crisis situation.

And the Seanad . . . well, the Seanad wasn’t.

One might have expected the chamber to have been jam-packed for the start of the session, when the various party leaders would set out their Brexit stalls and say where we should go from here. But a lot of TDs don’t like Mondays, it seems.

Good turnout

Fianna Fáil, to be fair, had a very good turnout. Most of the parliamentary party was present for Micheál Martin’s fine speech. Sinn Féin managed a mid-strength display, Labour could only muster three TDs at any one time and Fine Gael did their leader no service at all with an abysmal showing by backbenchers.

When the statements began, the Taoiseach had his Minister for Foreign Affairs, Charlie Flanagan, and Minister for Health, Simon Harris, beside him for support, along with Minister of State for European Affairs and perhaps the man with the greatest welcome for himself in the junior ranks, Dara Murphy.

Now that this Brexit omnishambles has kicked off, Dara will be swashbuckling at a great rate around Europe in his mission to save Ireland. This may possibly involve an around-the-clock Garda taxi service to make doubly sure he gets to the airport from his base in Cork without his own car breaking down.

Enda Kenny, who looks exhausted, outlined what he intends to do in the aftermath of Britain’s referendum result. In his speech, he was non-partisan and businesslike. There is a job to be done in the coming years and he outlined how his government is going to tackle it.

They have put in place “contingency management arrangements” at a “particularly challenging, particularly challenging” time involving “key issues” and “key agencies.”

And he’s off to Brussels this morning to get the ball rolling.

So too is the Fianna Fáil leader (because he is the unofficial 2nd Taoiseach since his party agreed to support Fine Gael in government). Micheál Martin will be having talks with ALDE, Fianna Fáil’s grouping in Europe.

He won the cliche competition at the very beginning of his speech, blowing away the competition.

“The next few years will be a defining moment” because now “the stakes are much higher”.

He said his party would support the Government in every way it could in this difficult time. “We all need to be wearing the green jersey.”

It’s fortunate so that the Republic of Ireland was knocked out of the European Championships at the weekend, thus leaving any amount of green jerseys available for our negotiating teams.

During his contribution, Martin eloquently analysed why he feels Ireland, Britain and Europe now finds itself in this very difficult situation.

Brexit bluebottle

He was buzzed by a very persistent bluebottle during his speech. The creature eventually dozed off on the microphone in front of the young deputy Jack Chambers. But not for long. It rallied when Gerry Adams began to speak, flying sleepily past Fianna Fáil’s Billy Kelleher who tried to kill it with his order paper.

Gerry doesn’t appear to be going to Brussels tomorrow. On the other hand, never one to miss an opportunity, he is one of the star attractions at a hastily convened Sinn Féin public rally in Liberty Hall this week.

“Seize the Moment – Time for a United Ireland” is his party’s big response to Brexit.

Before he too was finally assailed by the Brexit Bluebottle, Gerry managed to mention Sinn Féin 10 times in his speech, which he began by immediately claiming the referendum result as “vindication” for the party’s stance on Europe, before going on to explain why it supported a Remain vote.

Richard Boyd Barrett, meanwhile, tore strips off the other parties for dismissing people who voted to leave the EU as racists. Ruth Coppinger remarked witheringly that “some people would like the great unwashed not to have a vote”.

And Boyd-Barrett pointed to the “dishonest narrative of what was at stake and which wanted to present anybody in favour of an exit vote as a reactionary xenophobe, or a disgusting political opportunist like Boris Johnson.”

But Labour’s Brendan Howlin had little time for the TDs from AAA-PBP.

“Their appetite for chaos seems to have no end but they do this in the name of the left. They have much more in common with the nihilistic right than with genuine progressives.”

They talked on until early evening. Only revving up.This will run and run.