With Leinster House on high election alert, this has gone beyond the beyond.
There was consternation in the corridors of power on Friday afternoon when a motion issued from the Ceann Comhairle pushing back the start of the week’s business by an hour next Tuesday at the Taoiseach’s request for the purposes of “taking such other business as shall be ordered for that day”.
On the Oireachtas website, the schedule for the rest of the Dáil week remained blank while the schedule for the Seanad went up as usual. Ordinarily, they both go up at the same time.
The Taoiseach appeared in the canteen soon after the notice appeared, completely unnerving people who asked what was going on by telling them he wanted to get things done before leaving for his meeting with Joe Biden. And saying it with a wink.
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Then a large number of ministerial drivers arrived in for food at the same time and everyone wondered did they know something about an election being called but weren’t saying.
Government sources were bombarded with queries. They told people to chill, the Taoiseach just wanted to do Leaders’ Questions before he left for Washington.
That didn’t really help. The Taoiseach goes abroad a lot. It’s no big deal, senior Ministers answer in his place.
Why so the need to be in early on Tuesday? Heather or Paschal or somebody else could have slotted in, no problem.
This poll trolling by Simon Harris has to stop. He seems to be taking pleasure in it.
Nerves are in shreds.
Cross-Border pouch
Those razor-sharp minds in Sinn Féin’s Belfast office must have been very distracted last month when the Minister for Education in a Stormont Executive led by their party’s deputy leader rolled out a £250,000 phone pouches pilot scheme for 10 schools in the North.
Because it appears to have passed them by.
But when pouches were promised a month later across the Border, Sinn Féin – simultaneously firefighting a mounting controversy over two former party officials providing job references for a former colleague under investigation for child sex abuse – erupted in vociferous protest.
At 25 grand per school, if Paul Givan’s figures for Northern Ireland were applied to all second-level schools south of the Border, the pouches would cost more than twice the eye-watering €9 million estimate on the table here.
Perhaps staff shortages in HQ were to blame for Sinn Féin’s failure to kick up a rumpus about the DUP Minister’s extremely expensive plan. The ever-vigilant press office mustn’t have noticed the reports about other political parties strongly objecting.
Maybe First Minister Michelle O’Neill was preoccupied, still trying to put a name to the face of that chap from the British Heart Foundation who attended the same small event she did in parliament buildings last year.
It was Michael McMonagle. He worked in the Sinn Féin press office until he was suspended two years ago after the party discovered he had been under investigation for child sexual offences for almost a year. But the Belfast based vice-president of Sinn Féin says she didn’t clock him at the gig, even though photos show him in close proximity.
Then again, the phone pouches might have been overlooked because the two press officers who wrote the references for McMonagle – one a very senior official – also had to resign.
This twist only recently came to light publicly so the back-room team mightn’t have been on the ball on the phone front in Belfast, where usually nothing gets past them.
One way or the other, Paul’s pouches, which Givan enthusiastically promoted using the same arguments now being put forward by his southern counterpart, Norma Foley, didn’t unduly trouble Sinn Féin.
But Alliance Party leader Naomi Long, Minister for Justice in the powersharing administration, reacted swiftly. At a time when her own department is under funding pressure, she found this expenditure “hard to fathom”.
Her party’s education spokesperson, Michelle Guy, was “greatly concerned” by the proposal to spend this amount of money “when we are currently facing incredibly constrained financial times”.
Traditional Unionist Voice MLA Timothy Gaston declared himself “flabbergasted” by the expenditure.
Four weeks later in Dublin and Sinn Féin is suddenly screaming blue murder about phone pouches.
Pearse Doherty went ballistic over them at Leaders’ Questions on Thursday. Videos condemning and mocking the move went up on social media from his Dáil colleagues. Party leader Mary Lou McDonald has been incandescent ever since.
On Friday, Norma Foley staunchly defended her plan. But those mobile phone pouches have already nailed their place in posterity on the wall height chart of ill-advised spending, a notch above the bike shed and somewhere between the security hut and the children’s hospital on the top.
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Meanwhile, as the disquieting saga of how the party handled the Michael McMonagle situation continued apace, the Sinn Féin machine went into overdrive over those pouches but went to ground on what happened in Belfast.
Mary Lou wrote personally to the Taoiseach asking for Foley’s proposal to be withdrawn and now the party wants a Dáil vote on it next week.
The Government returned fire with Minister of State Jennifer Carroll MacNeill’s letter to the Sinn Féin leader asking her to make a Dáil statement about those references written for a job which would see McMonagle working with children in a charity organisation.
“Your silence is deafening on the issue of two senior members of your staff giving a reference to a child sex offender from your staff,” she wrote.
This 33rd Dáil is rattling towards a bad-tempered end.
Post-colonial visit
Sometimes it can be hard to figure out who is actually in charge, given the way recent visits to Dublin by British prime minister Keir Starmer and foreign secretary David Lammy have been handled.
We hear relations between Irish and British officials turned a bit narky behind the scenes last month with the carry-on of some London officials proving a source of irritation.
“They can’t help but behave as if they are dealing with one of the colonies,” sighed one exasperated official.
One of the British demands – not really a request – was to have no engagement with the press, despite all of the talk about putting Anglo-Irish relations out there publicly to be “on a new plane”.
Although when Lammy came to Dublin on Thursday to meet the Tánaiste, they both got on famously, just like Starmer and the Taoiseach.
The foreign secretary described his visit to Dublin as “historic”. It was, he said, reflective of No 10′s commitment to “resetting ties with Ireland and Europe”.
The warm words reflected the reality.
“Miles better than dealing with the bloody Tories”, apparently.
Pop diplomacy
As the party conference season drew to a close across the water last week, the Conservatives cut loose at countless receptions and after-parties, temporarily taking the edge off the pain of not being in power any more.
Early on Tuesday evening, the Irish Embassy welcomed its Tory guests at a bash in the Sonata Room of the Hyatt Regency Hotel. During his speech, Ambassador Martin Fraser singled out the embassy’s political councillor, Michael Lonergan, for special mention.
Michael, an extremely experienced diplomat with an extensive network of contacts in Westminster, finishes his stint in London next year.
After the embassy event, the party moved on to the nearby Mooncat piano bar, where a lobby group for the UK music industry was holding its conference shindig with 1990s heart-throb Peter Andre as the star turn.
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The venue was packed. Andre leapt from the stage and moved through the crowd, dancers in tow, while blasting out Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours).
Michael Lonergan instinctively did what a diplomat does as Andre passed, sticking out his hand like he was meeting a visiting head of state.
The singer responded by handing him the microphone.
“Now, you sing the next line.”
Which he did, gamely attempting to swivel a hip at the same time. He got a hero’s welcome from the rest of the aul fellas when he returned to his table.
The last stop and main event of the night saw the dauntless diplomats, politicians, party hacks and media hacks pitch up at the Spectator’s famed champagne party where guests included James Cleverly, Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Michael didn’t sing.
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