DÁIL SKETCH:THE SORDID saga of Anglo Irish Bank caused a brief hush in the Dáil chamber yesterday.

Government backbenchers, normally anxious to rebuff criticism from a politically hungry Opposition, remained mute as Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald challenged the €1.2 million paid in bonuses and fees to staff last year.

She was sure, she said, that Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore’s eyes had watered, as hers had, when he heard the news. “While I accept that the payments were not made on his watch, one individual in the bank is due to receive a payment of €51,000,” she added.

The bank had driven the State to the brink, she said.

The silence continued as McDonald demanded to know how 22 of the 50 senior people who were employed in Anglo at the height of its “dangerous casino capitalism”, could remain there. Nineteen of them received salaries in excess of €175,000, she added.

Gilmore said he would not defend the bonuses, which arose prior to 2009 and the bank’s nationalisation. He warned against grand-standing.

“You spent enough time over in the opposition benches grandstanding,” said Fianna Fáil’s Timmy Dooley.

This was the cue for the Opposition to renew its charge that the vocal Gilmore of the Opposition benches had become the acquiescent Tánaiste. Labour backbenchers recovered their voices and heckled the opposition TDs who clearly felt they were on a roll.

Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party, raised the issues of bed closures and cutbacks in Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown, reminding the Labour leader the hospital was called after “a great socialist”.

He wondered how the Government could stand over slashing hospital budgets when €17 billion in interest payments alone was to be paid to bondholders in the aforementioned Anglo Irish Bank during the next 20 years.

As Higgins continued, Gilmore accused him of talking “in apocalyptic terms” about a circular issued earlier yesterday.

“The Tánaiste was good at using ‘apocalyptic’,” said Fianna Fáil’s Dara Calleary. “He wrote the book on the subject.” Gilmore asked for calm, noting that assurances had been given on a 24-hour accident and emergency service.

Accusing Gilmore of waffling, Higgins pointed to the seat, eerily vacant yesterday, used by the Tánaiste when he led Labour from the opposition benches.

“What happened to the outrage he expressed when he sat on that side of the chamber?” asked Higgins.

Abandoning his earlier aspirations for calm, Gilmore assured Higgins that he felt the same way about the health services as he did this time last year or 10 years ago.

“The deputy should stop his populist claptrap,” said Gilmore.

Adjudicating on the Gilmore-Higgins exchanges, Dooley observed: “The deputy’s claptrap is competing with the Tánaiste rhetoric”. Independent Mattie McGrath remarked that the Tánaiste “has the patent on it”.

Opposition TDs will, no doubt, return to Gilmore’s political past.

And the Tánaiste will continue to reply in kind.