Welcome back to Dáil’s Got Talent in Leinster House, and this week’s live auditions in the chamber.
We are beyond excitement!
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Sadly, no sign again of DGT’s two cheeky chappies Leo and Micheál, the Cant and Neck of Irish politics. People sometimes struggle to tell them apart but apparently Leo always stands to the right of Micheál and that’s how to distinguish between the two.
Head judge Mary Lou McDonald is also missing from this round of the contest.
Too big to gig with the B-listers.
Who are today’s favourites?
Meet Simon, a winsome contortionist from Wicklow who can verbalise from any position on any position without pausing for breath.
Meet Sorca, a vivacious accountant from Westmeath who burst on to the scene last month as Education Spokesperson in Mary Lou’s reshuffle special.
The Ceann Comhairle, presiding over everything from his opera box above the main stage, was thrilled to be premiering two new performers at Leaders’ Questions.
“Some fresh meat in today for this particular piece of business,” beamed Seán Ó'Fearghaíl.
“So we welcome Minister Harris and deputy Sorca Clarke on behalf of Sinn Féin.”
Actually, Seán probably said “fresh faces” but it’s the same thing.
As Mary Lou McDonald had chosen to concentrate once more on rising consumer prices during her stint the previous day, it was a surprise to hear deputy Clarke return to the same topic for her maiden outing. (Labour leader Ivana Bacik and People Before Profit’s Richard Boyd-Barret both brought up the weekend attacks in Dublin’s south inner city where homeless migrants were intimidated and their tents and belongings burned).
It was left to Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns to broach the brewing political storm over the Government’s strategy for housing migrants, as residents in a rural area of Co Clare continued their blockade of a local hotel following the unannounced arrival of a busload of asylum seekers earlier this week.
[ No resolution in sight to asylum seeker dispute at picturesque Co Clare villageOpens in new window ]
She had plenty of material to exploit, including strong rumours of Cabinet discord over the handling of the issue.
There is talk that the Green Party is unhappy about the unequal division of labour between when it comes to handling the difficult, complicated and increasingly divisive question of housing asylum seekers and refugees.
Holly was able to draw on comments by a Green Party senator on Morning Ireland that Roderic O’Gorman, the overworked Minister for Integration, has been cut adrift by his senior Cabinet colleagues in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil and “thrown under the bus”.
Naturally, Holly drove the aforementioned vehicle straight at the Taoiseach’s understudy, Simon Harris: “Do you agree that Minister O’Gorman has been thrown under the bus and left to deal with this issue alone?”
Meanwhile Longford-Westmeath TD Sorca Clarke put in a competent and confident debut performance, but she was let down by her material. It was as if Sinn Féin’s wordsmiths simply dusted down one of Mary Lou’s old scripts and sent her into the chamber to read it.
Households pushed to the brink, people at their wits’ end and put to the pin of their collar unable to stretch any more with nothing left to fall back on.
“And the government is merely sitting on its hands.”
She then illustrated her point with two distressing case histories – one, a 90-year-old woman in arrears on her gas bill and facing disconnection; and the other an elderly widow who has had to cover her inflated electricity bill with the money she painstakingly saved from her pension to pay for her husband’s gravestone.
“What will it actually take for your to get their act together?”
This was deja-vu Mary Lou.
But given the script she had to work from, Sorca’s DGT Leaders’ Questions live audition was a success.
As for the Minister for Higher Education and Justice, he’s hardly a political ingénue. Many of his Coalition Cabinet colleagues have stepped in to fill the breach for Taoiseach or Tánaiste at Leaders’ Questions so it was surprising to discover the highly articulate Simon Harris has never been one of them.
He is often mentioned in dispatches as a possible successor to Leo Varadkar. Interesting that he should follow Heather Humphreys in the DGT’s live auditions. Both Dáil performances were watched with the sort of interest not usually afforded to stand-ins.
He went down the usual route of quoting all the allowances and payments paid by the over the last year to alleviate the burden of people struggling to keep up with soaring energy and food bills.
Then he set about attacking Sorca and Sinn Féin with a damp head of lettuce.
Usually, said the Minister, Opposition parties can come into the Dáil and make all sorts of demands without ever having to know how they “play out in the real world”.
This is why he was surprised to hear Sorca talk about energy because “actually, unfortunately for you, Liz Truss became the British Prime Minister” and she did what Sinn Féin is advocating and introduced price caps and “tanked the pound”.
At the mention of Liz Truss, Patrick O’Donovan, resident intellectual of the Junior ministerial benches, burped “The Lettuce!”
A reference to the famously fresh Butterhead which enjoyed a longer shelf-life than Truss’s premiership.
Oh no, said Simon smoothly, the government won’t be inflicting Sinn Féin style “Trussonomics” on the country anytime soon. Instead there will be legislation to impose a windfall tax on energy company profits, which he hopes Sinn Féin will support.
He made his concluding remarks into a barrage of highly indignant roaring from across the floor.
In Dáil’s Got Talent, that would be the equivalent of a standing ovation. The Minister looked quite pleased with himself, but in a respectful way, of course.
Mischief maker Marc MacSharry cottoned on to the significance of the Harris performance and used it to get some attention for his question about the upgrade of the N17 in Sligo during Questions on Promised Legislation.
The Independent TD for Sligo-Leitrim knew exactly what he was at when he rose to address Leo Varadkar’s understudy, opening with a stuttering “Taoiseach. Eh, eh, oh sorry, Future Taoiseach!”
He spotted a good line and went with it.
Cheeky, but not entirely baseless.
Simon may not be allowed take Leaders’ Questions again.
