Drapier: So Michael McDowell, an ex-Blueshirt, approached John Deasy, a young Blueshirt, to join the yellow and blue PDs. He should have realised that Deasy has more loyalty to his political roots than himself. Anyway, what was he offering? A cosy seat beside Fiona O'Malley, muzzled on the Government's backbenches!
His efforts to grow the PDs, by acquisition, might have more success with Marian Harkin, whose dismal impact at national level is compounded by the irrelevance of Independent TDs and the lack of a strong Oireachtas Committee system. She might be tempted to have a go for the yellow and blues in Connaught/Ulster now that Dana Rosemary Scallon will probably not stand again for the European Parliament in the elections in June 2004.
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Drapier wonders, sometimes, about the soft life the Oireachtas press gang have and what would happen to many of them if their employers introduced effective benchmarking of their performance. The Dáil press gallery is frequently empty and the Seanad receives scant media coverage. Simply watching the TV monitors in the press rooms, or using the Internet at home, cannot accurately assess the interactive nature of the Dáil.
The editors of the national media could usefully assess performance in this area, bearing in mind the cost of newspapers!
To be specific, Drapier happened to observe an excellent and well-informed debate on the outcome of the informal European Council in Athens. Brian Cowen, Gay Mitchell, Ruairí Quinn, John Gormley, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, and Finian McGrath all spoke knowingly and from different perspectives.
Yet, not a single press gang member was there to report about the issues of the Convention on the Future of Europe and what will unfold in the coming months and become a defining part of Ireland's European history next year in the Irish EU presidency. So much for the Fourth Estate!
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Drapier was cynically amused in reading the carefully planted story in the Sunday Business Post, which claimed that the Taoiseach had given a dressing-down to his Ministers for their lack of application to the job and their failure to support each other. If ever there was a case of "do what I say and not what I do" then this was it.
Bertie is the original go-it-alone operator, who spends more time out of his office than in it. The primary task of the Taoiseach in co-ordinating the implementation of Government policy is wilfully neglected as he relentlessly pursues popularity.
Drapier is certain that his old friend, Albert Reynolds, who did co-ordinate and drive the Cabinet in his day, had a wry smile at the expense of the current Taoiseach who shafted him in the nomination for president.
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So the brothers and sisters in the Labour Party had their conference in the State-owned Great Southern Hotel in Killarney last weekend. I hope they got a good deal, because it will soon be in private hands and neither John O'Donoghue nor Jackie Healy-Rae will say "boo". Pat Rabbitte seems to have had a fine conference. He looks the part and by all accounts delivered a sharp speech which he wrote himself. The test will be the local and European elections next year. He will then have to persuade Trevor Sargent and Enda Kenny to sign up for an acceptable pre-election deal.
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Drapier noticed Denis Haughey and other SDLP members in the Dáil distinguished visitors' gallery last week. It is hard times for democratic politicians, on all sides, in Northern Ireland to keep going when the elections are postponed indefinitely. The sooner a new date is set, the better for all concerned. The disarray in the republican leadership, following the unmasking of the alleged double agent "Stakeknife"/ Scappaticci might just suit Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to push their recalcitrant colleagues on the Army Council of the IRA to finally declare that the war is over.
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Labour appears to have lined up a good team to fight the European elections in Dublin. Ivana Bacik seems set to join Proinsias De Rossa in the four seater in what will be a most interesting contest. Fine Gael are said to be desperately looking to find a high profile replacement candidate now that Mary Banotti is retiring. Incidentally, the Womens' Political Association will feel a sense of achievement when the final ballot paper is published with Liz O'Donnell (PD), Patricia McKenna (Greens), Claire Daly (Socialist Party) and Mary Lou McDonald (Sinn Féin) along with Bacik confronting two men, Eoin Ryan (Fianna Fáil) and Proinsias De Rossa.
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Drapier sometimes wonders, if the Ceann Comhairle, Dr Rory O'Hanlon, realises that he is no longer chairman of the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party. Last Tuesday, for example, he displayed an extremely short fuse when he ordered Bernard Allen to leave the Chamber during Taoiseach's Questions. Enda Kenny and Fine Gael Whip, Bernard Durkan, sought to intervene. Allen's mortal sin, it appears, was that he was heckling the Taoiseach during one of Ahern's long rambling, incoherent and contradictory replies. Not for the first time, the Chair slapped down any protest from the Opposition that the Taoiseach was simply, and perhaps deliberately, not answering the question.
Maybe the Ceann Comhairle should learn to play the advantage rule, from time to time, and so enhance the quality and spontaneity of parliamentary debate. To make matters worse, he read out, the following day, a grovelling letter of apology which Allen had written so as not to be voted out of the Dáil, by way of punishment, for a couple of days.
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The dual mandate is now dead. Martin Cullen, on Wednesday last, got his short and tight Bill through the Dáil. Mind you, he had, privately and publicly, in his own parliamentary party, confirmed that the compensation money for retirement/ resignation, about €10,000 per Oireachtas member, would be paid out once (the dark side of Ireland) President McAleese had signed the Bill into law.
This she will no doubt do, and so that thud of cheques will be followed by the clink of resignations right across the country in every local authority where Oireachtas members hold on to the dual mandate.
Drapier wonders, sometimes, do we all have cousins in Sicily or else have we simply become very good Europeans.