Michael Lowry’s day of beckoning dawned on Tuesday.
He got what he wanted from the Taoiseach and that’s all that matters.
He palmed it into his back pocket with astonishing ingratitude, smirkingly disregarding the fact that his audacious demand was causing untold bother for the Government and leader he has publicly sworn to support.
Shameless and smug, the Independent TD for Tipperary goaded and gesticulated from his seat at the back of the Dáil chamber while all hell broke loose on the benches and Micheál Martin jumped through hoops for him.
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And then, Lowry’s moment of beckoning – a dismissive, sneering gesture that said it all.
It came after the Government used its voting majority to please him against the impassioned resistance of the entire Opposition (and more stony-faced, silent deputies on the Coalition side).
Socialist TD Paul Murphy – he wasn’t alone in doing this – held up his phone and began filming the unprecedented scenes of protest in the chamber.
When he panned across the aisle towards Michael Lowry, the two-digit TD for Tipperary turned in his seat, laughed, muttered something and then – it’s plain for all to see on the video – gave him the two fingers.
But not in a way which said “Ha, ha. I won. Up yours, the lot of yis!” It only looked like that.
Later Lowry reportedly said he was simply “beckoning” the Dublin South-West TD “to sit down”.
Anyway, we’ve all been there: graciously opting for the more courteous route by politely beckoning towards the angry person we’ve just put in their box instead of telling them to go and eff themselves.
In fairness to Micheál Martin, he would never behave in this manner. Did he see how the man for whom he was making a holy show of himself in the Dáil was behaving during his discomfiture?
Would it have mattered?
Micheál Martin clearly thinks the two-digit TD for Tipp, the man he once said was not fit to hold political office, is worth it.
Worth the Dáil chaos and the Opposition fury and the Government embarrassment. Worth scaring up old Fianna Fáil skeletons by brazenly pulling off an old-fashioned stroke and worth further deepening public cynicism in politics for the sake of...
For the sake of, well, what?
Giving Lowry the gift of a cock-and-bull story and the gift of political cover to get away with it.
That’s some ask from two-digit man: to be in Government and Opposition at the one time – lucratively signing for one team and then demanding to tog out for the other one to fool the supporters.
The two-digit TD got what he wanted, his subsequent actions in the Dáil conveying an impression that he didn’t care what ructions he caused inside and outside the Coalition along the way.
Because for disgraced former Fine Gael TD Michael Lowry, the man who was called “profoundly corrupt” in the 2011 report of a State tribunal examining payments to politicians, there never seems to be a reckoning.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin now going to bat for him. The anger of the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste after they signed their programme for government deal with Lowry, only for him to blindside them a couple of days later by demanding he and his tiny group be given time to question them during Leaders’ Questions along with bona fide members of the Opposition.
The five Opposition parties and groups said they wouldn’t stand for it if the Government attempted to railroad through their demand. But actually, they did. They spent much of what was a tumultuous shambles of a truncated Dáil-sitting standing up and roaring.
More than once, Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy glared at the howling Opposition and bellowed the line destined to go around the world the moment she uttered it.
“You are making a holy show of yourselves!”
They were too, to be sure. But not as much as Michael Lowry, or indeed, young Barry Heneghan from Dublin Bay North who began aping the more unsavoury moves of his Regional Independent Group leader, Lowry, by laughing and waving dismissively at incandescent members of the Opposition.
And then the Taoiseach, going to the wire for two-digit Lowry, the beckoning bounder of Irish politics. Sometimes he was angry, most times he chuckled at the massed ranks of the indignant in full cry across the floor.
Condemning the Opposition for its loud and large-scale disruption of the sitting, he told Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald that he has been in the Dáil since 1989 “and I have never seen an attempt like this!”
And the other side roared back at him that he never saw the like before because nobody ever attempted a stroke like the one he was now pulling for Lowry.
He mocked them for losing the plot over a mere “eight minutes on Tuesday and democracy is gone. Gone.”
That wasn’t the reason and he damn well knew it, they wailed.
“You’re all on high doh!” laughed Micheál, looking up to the press gallery to see how that went down.
Lowry loved it. He fell around the place.
The Taoiseach had taken all the right legal advice, so everything was grand to proceed with this unprecedented plan.
“Multiple senior counsels,” he declared, as if he was one of the more-money-than-sense litigants in the big, tech-bro falling-out action currently running in the Four Courts.
Labour leader Ivana Bacik said he was trying to foist “a sham Opposition” on to the real one, and “a poor tribute act” at that.
Lowry and young Barry fell around the place again.
Fianna Fáil’s John McGuinness, the Leas Ceann Comhairle and occasional critic of his own party, looked down grimly from his seat in the back row of the Coalition benches.
In the same row, Seán Ó Feargháil, former two-term ceann comhairle, put his head in his hands as the decibel level went through the roof.
Cian O’Callaghan of the Social Democrats made a telling point to the Taoiseach. A few Government TDs winced when he made it.
“Your backbenchers are well aware you wouldn’t be going to these extremes for them.”
Micheál’s militant cherishing of his backbenchers to have more speaking time (as cover for finding a way for the Lowry special ones to masquerade as Opposition members by holding to account the Government they are enabling).
Governments have to be formed, cried Micheál.
“At what price,” retorted an Opposition deputy.
The leaders, to a woman and a man, demanded to know what other concessions Lowry had extracted on the Taoiseach. “Come clean,” shouted O’Callaghan. “What is this all about?” asked Bacik.
Amid the tumult, away high in a far corner of the chamber, the television monitor which silently plays proceedings from the Seanad featured one of the Lowry group’s Ministers of State, Michael Healy-Rae. He was on his feet, filling in for the Minister for Children and the Minister for Justice.
Michael Collins of Independent Ireland quivered about “a dark day for democracy”. It wasn’t a great one, but steady on.
The house was suspended just the once. For the most part, the Ceann Comhairle adopted a tactic of letting members of the Opposition roar themselves out, in the hope that, like bold toddlers, they would get tired and give up.
No chance of that.
She eventually forced a vote through. There were no bells.
“Collusion!” roared the Opposition (minus Mattie McGrath and Carol Nolan, who didn’t participate in negotiating the programme for government but have joined the Lowry crew to get some of their specially engineered speaking time).
The vote passed amid complete pandemonium. The Opposition was livid with the Ceann Comhairle. The House broke up in disarray.
Mattie McGrath made for the doors, passing his erstwhile Rural Independent colleagues from the last government on his way out. Red-faced and roaring, he exchanged angry words with Michael Collins and Richard O’Donoghue.
They appeared to be squaring up to each other. An usher stepped discreetly between them and Mattie stormed out.
Then two-digits Lowry had his day of beckoning, after which he spoke to an usher, appearing to complain about Paul Murphy videoing him, even though a colleague very near to him was doing the same.
The Taoiseach packed up his files and left.
Later, he issued a statement.
“Today’s scenes in the Dáil marked a new low in the behaviour of the Opposition ... It was nothing less than a premeditated attempt to suppress the rights of others to speak, and to bully and intimidate the Ceann Comhairle.”
We couldn’t help thinking back to when his former leader Bertie Ahern was making a holy show of himself, day after day, in the Mahon tribunal, Micheál was chief among the Fianna Fáil top brass trooping out on to the Leinster House plinth to make excuses for him.
On Tuesday, Lowry might possibly have been grateful to him, even if he didn’t show it.
What might he have said afterwards?
“Thanks a millun, big boi!”
