Surrealing in the Years

Lowry’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle approach to Dáil speaking time isn’t getting anything done

This row is not about what the ‘informal technical grouping of unaligned members’ is calling themselves.

9.00am, 1 Feb 2025

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LAST WEEK’S FLURRY of parliamentary chaos demanded a refractory period in which post-Dáil clarity could set in amongst TDs as well as those of us watching on in horror from the comfort of our desks.

And what better way to do that then to remind ourselves what the people of Ireland care least about in the whole world and have ourselves a nice little Seanad election. That’s right, a democratic process we care about so little that we don’t even bother giving everyone the right to vote in it. And let’s face it, even if we were all eligible, we still wouldn’t care about it all that much.

One of the very few exciting things about Seanad elections is the mystery you can evoke by bragging about being eligible to vote in one. Maybe you went to a certain university, or maybe you sit on one or more of the five vocational panels that gets to elect 43 of the 60 senators for some reason. Who’s to say? And hey, if the Seanad is so stupid, then how come we voted to keep in a landslide margin of 51.7% to 48.2 in 2013? Nearly 40% turned out to vote in that referendum! Could just very slightly more than half of them be wrong?

With the best will in the world, this time next week the Seanad will be mostly forgotten and we’ll be back snout-first into the trough of Dáil business. And personally, I am hoping they start with the People Before Profit plan for two more bank holidays each year.

If this is a ploy to target the kind of voters who love sleeping late and live their lives in much the same way as Garfield from the beloved comic strip ‘Garfield’, then I speak on behalf of us all when I say: well played. Throw in a dressing gown, a rocking chair, some slippers and a bike shelter that costs a normal amount and these PBP folks might just get somewhere. 

In all seriousness, Ireland actually does lag behind its European counterparts when it comes to public holidays (Iceland has 16 to our ten), though we would likely have to come up with our own justifications (I just checked Belgium’s as a cross-reference and it does not make sense for us to co-opt ‘Flemish Holiday’ or ‘French Community Day’). Cyprus has some nice ideas, however, such as their Culture and Literacy Day on May 24. Though in Ireland, given our own cultural pastimes, we might as well name the day in honour of vying for Dáil speaking time.

One suspects that there may be a few more hurdles to clear before we reach those dizzying Icelandic heights. For starters, we still don’t have a final decision who is allowed to talk in Dáil Éireann and for how long. Perhaps next week will finally be the week we’ll learn whether Michael Lowry and the Four Seasons will sit with the government they are propping up or an opposition who wants nothing whatsoever to do with them.