Poor Martin had to put a Cork in it on his big day

IT was scarcely the day he dreamed of decades ago when he set his cap at becoming Taoiseach.

Nor indeed could it have been what he imagined during the hectic general election campaign, up to the last week when he was prophesied to win the crown.

Even as the ballot boxes delivered their blow and Micheál Martin contemplated the Sisyphean task his lifelong ambition had become, he could not have reckoned on how his big day would be such a pale and awkward imitation of that of his predecessors.

But despite all that, as he walked down the steps of the Convention Centre, after a most extraordinary Dáil session, our newly-minted Taoiseach Martin beamed in rapt delight as he looked about him.

Then he climbed into his car which sped off to Phoenix Park. All of this for him.

He left behind him party colleagues clapping proudly for the leader who had guided them from the ignominy of the banking collapse – when their redemption was unimaginable – back to the centre of power.

It was possibly the most spirited and spontaneous moment in a long and awkward morning when the familiar conventions of Leinster House were replaced by the novelty and strangeness of a brand new temporary Dáil building.

Martin’s election as Taoiseach will go down in history as a oneoff, but it was faithful to the template in so far as it included the obligatory political protests.

In all other respects, however, it was unique. Uprooted from Leinster House and transplanted to the swish Convention Centre, the man of the moment, deprived of his steadfast family, his wife Mary and grown up-children, cut a somewhat solitary figure. But in the vast and gleaming auditorium of the Convention Centre, with its state-of-the-art elevators and breathtaking panoramas, the atmosphere seemed slightly uncertain.

The voting bell, which could be heard peeling out over the Liffey at intervals, the Dáil security guards and staff transported over for the occasion, the Oireachtas logos visible at every turn – it was a game attempt to recreate some of the pomp and circumstance of our democracy.

But most striking of all was the lifeless atmosphere.

In normal times, the first day of a new Dáil sees the election of a new Taoiseach, unleashing a carnival atmosphere around Leinster House with party supporters and elated family members spilling onto the streets.

Who can forget the raucous céilí the Healy-Raes organised for outside Leinster House in 2016 to celebrate Danny’s first election to the Dáil? Or how after Bertie Ahern was toppled as Taoiseach, his replacement Brian Cowen brought his cavalcade down to Clara, Co. Offaly for a riotous sing-song and homecoming ceremony.

But all the good cheer was knocked on the head by Covid.

The door of Buswells Hotel, the stomping ground of political supporters on days like this, was firmly slammed shut against revellers.

And the elegant grounds of Government Buildings buzzed with nothing more substantial than a few bees, while Leinster House which should have been groaning with deliriously excited Corkonians was like a ghost estate.

Next week it will snap back into action, for the properly formed 33rd Dáil and with a new man in charge.

‘Good cheer knocked on the head by Covid’