Our beloved legislators are experts at wasting time. The latest exercise in consuming hours on trivial pursuits with no national significance or consequence was the Gildea debate in the Dβil - three hours of debate over two evenings on top of all the raucous huffing and puffing that preceded it over the course of a week or more, with the result as predicable as frost in winter.
It was not always so. Thirty years or so ago, when I had the task of producing for this newspaper what was known as the Dβil sketch - in effect a summary of the day's proceedings in the Oireachtas - matters of real substance were debated in the House.
When did you last hear one of our modern batch of parliamentarians raise questions about the contents of the school curriculum? Oliver Flanagan, one of the most tenacious deputies ever to tread the deep pile carpets of Leinster House, deemed it necessary to express his opposition to the inclusion of two classic Irish short stories in An Anthology of Short Stories prescribed by the Department of Education for the English Intermediate Certificate of 1967 - because, he contended, they contained "language which might be expected in a low-class pitch and toss school".
The offending items were Frank O'Connor's Guests of the Nation and Sean O'Faoilain's The Trout.
Question Time
The Fine Gael deputy for Laois-Offaly had not been satisfied with an answer he received to his original complaint at Question Time from the reforming Minister for Education, Donagh O'Malley. Only people of "very delicate sensibility indeed" would object to the language in the two stories, the Minister had remarked. Mr Flanagan sought and got permission to raise the matter on the adjournment, the half-hour set aside at the close of normal business to raise problems of some urgency.
He opened the joust with O'Malley by quoting the following sentence from Guests of the Nation: "The capitalists pay the priests to tell us about the next world so that you won't notice what the bastards are up to in this."
That type of language, he said, should not be in a book for children, many of whom might be in the first years of preparing for a religious life.
The Deputy detected some sniggers on the Fianna Fβil backbenches as he quoted from another passage: "Just as a man makes a home of a bleeding place, some bastards at headquarters thinks you're too cushy and shunts you off." Such language, he told them, was no cause of laughter to parents who were particular about the care and upbringing of their children, even if it was acceptable to Fianna Fβil. There were other expressions in the story, such as "Ah for Christ's sake", and "poor bugger", which would cause horror in any well conducted and properly supervised home.
"Most suggestive"
Then it was on to a "most suggestive" paragraph in O'Faoilain's The Trout: "Her pyjamas were very short, so that when she splashed water it wet her ankles. She peered into the tunnel.
"Something alive rustled inside there. She raced in and up and down she raced, and flurried and cried aloud, 'Oh gosh, I can't find it,' and then at last she did." Mr O'Malley inquired if the Deputy had read The Trout in full. The Official Report recorded the exchanges:
Mr O.J. Flanagan: Very suggestive. I did not like it.
Mr O'Malley: The saying, "Honi soit qui mal y pense", was never so appropriate as it is tonight. Does the Deputy, if he has read the story, realise that it is his own vivid and excitable imagination...
Mr O. J. Flanagan: No. Parents have written to me.
Mr. O'Malley: I would also point out to the Deputy that if he had read the story he would see this young girl is going into the tunnel to catch a trout and not to catch anything else.
The Minister went on to point out that the anthology also contained stories by O. Henry, H.G. Wells, G.K. Chesterton, Daniel Corkery, Liam O'Flaherty, Mary Lavin, Benedict Kiely, James Plunkett, Brendan Behan and Brian Friel, among others. They had been selected by representatives of all managerial and teachers' organisations.
Mr Flanagan conceded that he knew that Father Veale of Gonzaga and Mother Enda of Eccles Street were members of the selection committee, but he drew his own distinction between the roles of Church and State. "With very great respect it is the Minister himself who is responsible to the House, not Father Veale or Mother Enda." The Minister countered with the view that the committee had in mind their duty to prepare young minds for the kind of world in which they would have to take their place.
Nothing sacred
With remarkable percipiency (in 1967) he added: "It is safe to say that, five to 10 years hence, world television, to which nothing will be sacred, will be thrown open to us from one of many stations in the sky." The Minister argued that the words Mr Flanagan objected to did not carry a connotation other than mild, vulgar opprobrium and if preceded by the adjective "poor" they evoked sympathy, as in "poor bastard" or "poor hoor".
The Official Report again: Mr O'Malley: If Deputy Flanagan were down in the south of Ireland at a by-election, pulled up at the side of the road, and was told "John fell down a cliff and the poor hoor was killed..."
Mr O.J. Flanagan: I would say "Lord have mercy on him."
Mr O'Malley: He would say "The poor hoor. Lord have mercy on him."
Mr O.J. Flanagan: I would not; I would leave out "poor hoor". I do not care for that type of language.
The Minister, as always, had the last word: "May the Lord have mercy on us all."