Step into my office:New ministers and juniors have been regaling people all week with accounts of their new offices.
Joan Burton bounced back from her shock appointment to Social Protection – into a dark wood-panelled office in Busáras, where her department is located. She intends to brighten it up.
Leo Varadkar has removed all the pictures of helicopters Noel Dempsey had on the walls when he was in Transport. Leo was given a signed jersey by the Indian cricket team when he visited the country on St Patrick’s Day. He’s framed it and it’s on the wall.
The junior minister Sean Sherlock was blown away by the original Irish art in Enterprise. Now that he’s been told he can choose pictures from the OPW collection – as all ministers can – to hang in his office he is over the moon.
The suite smell of success: Fine Gael and Michael Collins take over Fianna Fáil HQ
YOU TURN your back for a few weeks to concentrate on minor political events and when you return the entire landscape has shifted.
Not politically, obviously, where the traditional fighting over jobs is in full swing; a tribunal report is causing consternation; skeletons are tumbling from Fine Gael’s cupboard; there is talk of mutiny in the ranks over the plan to abolish State cars; and Enda Kenny heralds his new dawn by temporarily retaining the services of a Government press secretary who batted for Bertie Ahern in the inglorious final years and for Brian Cowen in the calamitous non-communicative Biffo years. But a changed landscape, nevertheless.
There’s a lot of moving going on around Kildare Street. In the wake of their disastrous election performance, Fianna Fáil fought a valiant rear-guard action to hold on to their prestigious fifth-floor suite of meeting rooms: only one careful owner, deep emotional ties, photographs of Dev, obvious entitlement, would take months to remove the bloodstains.
The Soldiers of Destiny dug in their heels but to no avail. With just 20 TDs they couldn’t keep back the advancing hordes of Blueshirts. Fine Gael began moving in this week.
Hero of the hour is the Government chief whip, Paul Kehoe, who wrested the keys to the kingdom from the Fianna Fáil whip, Sean Ó Fearghail, after two meetings.
“I hear they were very long and fractious,” reports a jubilant Government deputy. Paul Conway, the superintendent of the Dáil, monitored proceedings from a neutral corner.
Fianna Fáil had argued Fine Gael’s old party room in the basement of the Leinster House 2000 annex was a bigger space and more suited to a party returning with increased numbers. What they didn’t say is that the room has no windows and the ventilation isn’t great. Some deputies swear they nearly died from asphyxiation during the fevered meeting on Enda Kenny’s leadership last year.
After a tour of the disputed territory, we can see why the fifth floor is such a prize. The main meeting room is bright and airy, with windows overlooking the city. The view at night is breathtaking.
When Fine Gael moved in, a row of photographs of Fianna Fáil leaders still adorned the wall. Seven in all, six in black-and-white and Micheál Martin, in the middle, in glorious colour. This must have replaced the photo of Brian Cowen, which was missing from the line-up.
This week, the Fianna Fáil group of senators turned up in their usual quarters for a regular pre-session. When they entered the room, they saw a picture of Michael Collins on the wall and left in disgust.
Who'll be picked for the plum jobs?
Fine Gael and Labour are settling into Government, but slowly. Most advisory positions have yet to be filled and there are a few long-serving party handlers waiting anxiously for the phone to ring.
One of the plum jobs has gone to the affable Nick Miller, late of the Fine Gael press office. Miller is off to join Leo Varadkar (right) as his press adviser. Jobs with Varadkar have been much coveted as he is seen as a young, rising star in the party.
There is less enthusiasm among the ambitious troops for jobs with the likes of Michael Noonan, Pat Rabbitte and Ruairí Quinn. Are they good long-term bets?
Two of the biggest jobs still on offer are the Leas Ceann Comhairle and the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. Both are high-profile and carry an extra few shillings. The Leas Ceann Comhairle gets the same perks as a junior minister.
The deputy chair usually goes to the opposition. Fianna Fáil’s John Browne of Wexford is firm favourite for the post, although the likes of Michael Kitt and former Ceann Comhairle Seamus Kirk are also said to interested.
Some mischief makers in Fine Gael are suggesting Fianna Fáil should be bypassed and the job should go to Sinn Féin instead. They argue that the last two incumbents were drawn from the Labour party, to the chagrin of the then largest opposition party.
Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil’s Niall Collins has been mentioned in relation to the Public Accounts Committee.
But so have others: Shane Ross is coming up hard on the inside rail.
Time to reclaim the Easter lily?
There are strict rules in the Dáil about wearing emblems. It is forbidden for anyone to enter the chamber wearing a badge, brooch or sticker of a party political nature. Peter Mathews, the dapper Fine Gael TD, was stopped on Tuesday and asked to remove his yellow Daffodil Day flower before entering the chamber. The new deputy graciously complied.
What so for the massed ranks of Sinn Féin, and they a proud and swaying meadow of enamel Easter lillies? An Oireachtas spokesperson investigated and reports that the Easter lily is not the preserve of any political party. No, the lily belongs to Ireland and we’re all free to wear one, should we so wish. There is a another school of thought that the put-upon authorities in Kildare Street just haven’t the stomach to start a row with Gerry Adams and his 13 deputies.
Lowry's Moneygall
We wrote a couple of years ago that Brian Cowen could have a slight problem on his hands if Barack Obama accepted his invitation to Moneygall. “Should the day ever dawn when America’s first black president pays a visit to his Irish ‘home place’, he will of course be greeted by the senior man in the constituency. Step forward, so, Deputy Michael Lowry.”
The Offaly village of Moneygall was moved into Tipperary North when the electoral boundaries were redrawn, and Lowry is the constituency’s epic vote getter.
Despite his current travails, Lowry is looking forward to meeting Obama, who he says will get a rousing welcome. “It’s a huge boost to the country, and at a time when we’re negotiating with Europe it sends out a message that we are respected by the mightiest in the world.”
Lowry intends to fill Obama in on the progress of the huge casino project in his constituency. “We will also be availing of the opportunity to inform the president that here, at Two Mile Borris in Tipperary, we are building the original, authentic architectural replica of the White House . . . as it looked on the day it was first built.”
Fionnuala's primroses get all the TLC
Due to a communications malfunction – information was thin on the ground about Enda and Fionnuala Kenny during their Washington visit – we got our primroses mixed up last week and in the process, disappointed Kilkenny-based the nursery man Pat FitzGerald.
Such fripperies are of little concern to those macho types who ration information to the media, but for the record, it was Fionnuala Kenny who presented Michelle Obama with a new Drumcliff variety of the Kennedy Irish Primrose, and not the other way around.
Michelle said she would be planting them in her White House garden at the earliest opportunity. They have lovely dark foliage.
The Irish-grown plants were inspected and certified in accordance with US department of agriculture import regulations and shipped to Herronswood Nurseries in Pennsylvania where they were acclimatised and prepared for the presentation.
The primroses were given more TLC than the media posse which traversed the Atlantic to cover the new Taoiseach’s good news story. There wasn’t as much as a glass of water from Uncle Sam during the hectic two-day visit (apart from some black coffee provided while Enda had breakfast with vice-president Joe Biden).
At least nobody was caught snaffling a canape at the White House reception. One famished hack did that last year and was reprimanded by an official who ordered her to put down the half she hadn’t eaten, and just stopped short of making her regurgitate the rest.
Then Ivana Bacik nipped in for her bag
Ivor Callely’s last hurrah on Thursday was never going to be a quiet affair.
The outgoing senator, fresh from a successful High Court appeal against his suspension from the Seanad, wanted to put his explanation of his controversial expenses claims on the official record before bowing out of politics. He was also keen to outline why he felt so maligned by the media and certain colleagues.
His first attempt to speak was ruled out of order by the Cathaoirleach, Pat Moylan, who told him he could not make a personal statement. He tried again, this time with Fine Gael’s Paddy Bourke in the chair. Callely (right) was down to speak on a thrilling motion concerning “EU Regulation on Judgements in Civil and Commercial Matters”. Interestingly, although he is no longer a member of Fianna Fáil, he was listed as the party’s first speaker. How could this be? Some cynical people thought this was, perhaps, a little kindness done to Callely by a former colleague in need of his vote in the forthcoming Seanad election.
Callely addressed the motion, particularly the issues relating to fair trial procedures (as they related to him). Bourke attempted to bring the shutters down. Callely resisted. He had two speeches in his hands – the EU one and the Ivor one. He got to deliver neither, but made quite a rumpus, in the process accusing his nemesis, the senator Joe O’Toole, of “political assassination”. O’Toole told Callely the Seanad had given him a number of opportunities to discuss the issue but he declined them.
“You’re a sham, do you know that, O’Toole?” raged Callely, demanding he be allowed to speak. (This was before he was told his behaviour was bringing the house into disrepute.) Callely persisted and the House was suspended.
But this didn’t stop him. He continued to talk, even though there was nobody in the chamber and he was not being recorded. One camera continued to function, but there was no sound, so bemused senators watched him on a monitor as he mouthed silently to the four walls for over ten minutes. Then he appeared to stop, looking around, speeches in hand. At this point, Ivana Bacik nipped in to retrieve her handbag, and he started up again. But she ran out.
His final attempt to be heard was also thwarted and he sat down on the understanding he could finish his speech later. Bourke said he was giving no such undertaking. “On the basis of what I have said, I will resume my seat,” said Callely.
At least he has loyal followers in West Cork. At the request of friends, prayers were said for Callely at two masses recently in Kilcrohane and Gorta Lassa.
“The prayers were for him and his friends and supporters who stuck by him in his hour of need,” said a local. “It kind of caused a stir among people.”
Not on the list? You get my vote
Micheál Martin’s list of 10 preferred candidates, who he wants his councillors to vote for in the Fianna Fáil Seanad elections, has become known as the “group of death”.
The councillors, who fear they will go the way of the veterans and the outspoken who don’t fit the new candidate profile, are not inclined to take their leader’s direction. One former TD, passed over for the list, tells of an encounter he had with a county councillor. “Are you on the list?” “No.” “I’ll give you a vote, then.”
The two camps – the chosen ones and the crafty ones – are anxiously eyeing each other. The old hands reckon Martin’s new faces don’t have the contacts to deliver the votes. The delisted ones fear their councillors will be asked to gather in a central location for the purpose of casting their votes – this must be done under the supervision of an independent witness. But there is nothing to stop party enforcers peeping over the shoulders of their councillors as they vote.
