On the first day back after the recess, a big Dáil shout-out for the two big winners of last weekend: Academy Award winner Jessie Buckley and Ireland’s Triple Crown heroes.
Jim O’Callaghan, the Minister for Justice, was delighted to have the opportunity to commend Jessie’s “success and outstanding achievement” in winning an Oscar for Best Actress and “acknowledge the role of the Irish rugby team” in retaining the title.
He must have been surprised when Mary Lou McDonald didn’t open Leaders’ Questions with a congratulatory nod.
But the Sinn Féin leader was probably too busy psyching herself up for another matinee performance of her punchy one-woman Dáil show: “A Do-Nothing Government.”
She hit familiar rhetorical marks very early on with a brief scene-setter about households getting “hammered” by “skyrocketing” fuel prices while the cost of diesel and home heating oil has “spun out of control” with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael “absent” on the issue.
Mary Lou neither had a full house nor a top quality audience, but she got stuck in nonetheless. She would have preferred to have addressed the Taoiseach himself, but with Micheál Martin on St Patrick’s week duty in the US, Jim O’Callaghan was in as his understudy.
She treated him to her big line.
“A do-nothing Government, sitting on your hands, refusing to help while workers, motorists and families are fleeced.”
She forget to say “put to the pin of their collar” during her virtuoso vexation, but it’s a fluid script.
As people suffer, she told Jim, the Taoiseach has been saying it is too early to act while promising his Government is keeping the situation “under review”.
[ Taoiseach survives White House shark tank unscathedOpens in new window ]
Mary Lou shuddered.
“My. God.”
Never heard the like of it before for detachment and disconnection.
“You see, people can’t wait as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael twiddle your thumbs,” she informed Jim, whose thumbs looked fine.
You see, Sinn Féin has the solution to runaway prices – cut the taxes on petrol, diesel and home heating oil.
“No more excuses, no more beating around the bush, no more delay.”
The party had legislation prepared and ready to go. The Government just had to implement it.
Her deputy leader in the Dáil, Pearse Doherty, introduced it a short time later.
“The Mineral Oil Tax Emergency Cost of Living Reduction Bill 2026” hadn’t the immediate grab-you impact of “A Do Nothing Government” but Pearse put his heart into it.
“This legislation can be passed today if the Government is willing,” he passionately declared, knowing, like the audience, that wouldn’t be happening.
Why? Because the Government is going to write it.
The matter is being “considered” Jim O’Callaghan repeatedly assured the House in his very considered answers to a rush of urgent calls for action.
He might have wanted to say more, but as a mere stand-in (nursing leadership aspirations) he can’t be definitive about anything.
“What has been indicated by the Taoiseach is, most probably, we will look at the issue of excise duties for the purpose of cutting them to take pressure off consumers,” he carefully revealed to Mary Lou.
He told Labour’s Ivana Bacik: “Obviously people are concerned about the rising cost of fuel, and that’s why the Taoiseach, and indeed, the Tánaiste and other Government ministers have indicated measures will be probably taken in response to what’s happening to the price of fuels.”
Impassioned pleas for help from Opposition deputies representing all parts of the country and all shades of political opinion will have been reflected behind the scenes in interventions from Government backbenchers hearing the same concerns from constituents.
Such was the appetite for this crisis, trooper that she is, Mary Lou returned for an encore during the Order of Business, calling for a debate on the price rises and “A Do Nothing Government”.
This fuel issue was the burning issue of the day and even if Big Jim was not at liberty to say, the story was only going one way.
Sure enough, as the evening debate on Sinn Féin’s emergency Bill got going, Tánaiste Simon Harris informed the chamber that the Government was finalising an “appropriate intervention” which will be waved through by the Cabinet when it meets early next week.
No surprise there.
There had been another big hint earlier from the Minister for Justice, reminding the Dáil of how “the Taoiseach indicated when he was in the United States that measures are being considered and it is likely that there will be measures introduced”.
What a man.
Jim O’Callaghan was lost in admiration for his boss.
He may have started with much deserved praise for Buckley and the Ireland rugby squad, but he spent far more time lauding Micheál Martin for the “excellent job” he did with the tricky role of playing opposite erratic prima donna president Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday.
If the Minister for Justice had his way, Micheál, upon his triumphant return from the United States, would be conveyed in an open-top bus through bunting bedecked streets to a hero’s welcome in a civic space large enough to accommodate the cheering masses.
“Any fair-minded person who looked at the events in the White House yesterday would recognise that the Taoiseach did an excellent job,” he cooed after the Labour leader expressed “deep disappointment” over Micheál’s failure “to push harder against Trump’s delusional ramblings” and “to condemn his illegal war in Iraq”.
Jim murmured an acid response. “Obviously, if you’d been there you would have dealt with it completely differently and more effectively …”
Except if Ivana were in power, she wouldn’t have been there anyway because Labour didn’t want the Taoiseach to attend, he added.
Micheál delivered a “very important message” at an “extremely difficult time” between Europe and the US and it was a “real advantage” to have him there as leader of a non-Nato European country, burbled Big Jim.
“I think he did Ireland and Europe proud.”
Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit didn’t think so.
“Not a single word of criticism of the flagrant, murderous breaches on international law that Trump and Israel are engaged in,” he fumed.
What the Taoiseach did in the White House was “extremely important”, repeated Jim.
“Obviously, if you were Taoiseach, Deputy Boyd Barrett, you wouldn’t have gone to the United States,” sniffed Jim.
Oh, yes he would.
“I would have gone to the United States and stood with people like Mamdani who reminded us of our own history of opposition to colonialism and war but I certainly wouldn’t stand beside a warmonger like Trump,” responded RBB.
Lawyer Jim pounced.
“You mentioned the Mayor of New York, Mamdani. Of course, he did go to the White House. He’s not refusing to meet president Trump because of what’s happening in Iran … the Irish Government believes there should be engagement when it comes to seeking to resolve disputes. Your view is: stay away from it.”
There was one other thing he had to say before resting his case.
“And I commend the Taoiseach again for the great performance he put in yesterday.”
And the Oscar for best Fianna Fáil Minister in a supporting role goes to …