DISTANCING IN THE DÁIL LEAVES TDs HOT UNDER THE COLLAR
TENSIONS were running high in the Dáil chamber yesterday as the second tranche of emergency legislation was rushed through a parliament operating on a ‘war footing’.
The significance of the times we’re living in is making some TDs a little hot under the collar, it seems.
‘It’s a f***ing joke,’ roared Fianna Fáil TD Marc MacSharry before storming out of the chamber in advance of the day’s business even beginning.
It appears the Sligo-Leitrim TD had not read an email circulated by the Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl stipulating that only two TDs from each party could be in the chamber at any one time.
Social Democrats co-leader Róisín Shorthall was attempting to ensure order was observed as deputies filed in, but Mr MacSharry wasn’t satisfied and demanded to know on whose orders was he being banished.
His cough was softened somewhat when he learned it was the Ceann Comhairle’s
Fine Gael’s Bernard Durkan was also caught on the hop. ‘Who decided that?’ he asked as he performed a u-turn out of the chamber.
Other deputies were in a more light-hearted mood. ‘Come any closer and I’ll shoot,’ said Fianna Fáil justice spokesperson Jim O’Callaghan as his index finger and thumb transformed into a revolver pointed at a deputy encroaching into his two metres of personal space.
There were few surprises yesterday.
On Tuesday we learned what was going to be in the Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill. It includes a freeze on rents, a stay on evictions and allows for the Government’s significant wage subsidy for those impacted by the Covid-19 crisis.
The Bill also has legislation governing the amalgamation of public and private health services to deal with the emergency, reenlisting of retired healthcare and Defence Forces personnel, as well as allowing restaurants to bypass planning laws to operate as takeaways.
The emergency legislation is expected to pass the Seanad today and be signed into law by President Michael D Higgins over the weekend.
Many of these measures have been extolled by the left-wing parties for years, ‘long before Covid-19 entered our lives’, as Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty pointed out to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar yesterday.
Mr Varadkar told the Dáil that, as a doctor and a politician, he knows the value of ‘repetition’ and reiterated points on hand hygiene, cough etiquette and social distancing.
But there is a another point that the Taoiseach has been repeating. When the details of the emergency measures were being announced on Tuesday, the Taoiseach was queried about how a rent freeze or an amalgamation of the public and private health services could be done when he previously batted both away as being ‘unconstitutional’.
Yesterday he repeated his response verbatim: ‘Some might ask why these things were not done before now – and why we have previously objected to measures such as rent freezes, a moratorium on evictions, and the coopting of private healthcare.
‘The truth is that these are
‘Come any closer and I’ll shoot’ ‘The common good applies’
extraordinary times. For example, property rights are always subject to the common good in our Constitution.
‘I don’t think anyone would argue that this is an extraordinary situation where the common good applies,’ he said.
The ‘common good’ it seems does not extend to a one-time Fine Gael pledge to end homelessness, the practice of having thousands of patients on trolleys or an easily extendable list of other worthy endeavours.
Figures from Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe estimate that the current crisis will cost the Government in the region of €300million a week – the common good is a costly pursuit.
As tributes were paid across the political spectrum to frontline workers, Independent TD Mattie McGrath got to his feet to say he was vexed by reports that ‘yahoos’ were coughing and spitting at gardaí, with a number of other TDs calling for stricter penalties for those caught doing so.
The lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for frontline workers was a persistent topic throughout the day, too.
In his maiden speech in the Dáil, Independent TD, and former Deputy Head of the Army Ranger Wing, Cathal Berry, shot holes in the Government’s plan to bring retired members of the Defence Forces back by saying he envisaged as few as a dozen will take up the opportunity to re-enlist.
As proceedings dragged into the night, deputies paused their debate at 8pm to join in a round of applause for healthcare workers continuing on the frontline of the crisis following a motion by Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Bríd Smith.
With the limit on the number of TDs allowed inside the chamber no doubt there were some bloody noses as deputies vied to get in for a primetime slot that was, undoubtedly, going to be aired on the evening news.