Brian silences TDs with his knife skills in Leinster House of Flying daggers
'I COMMEND these measures to the House," concluded Brian Lenihan to a deathly silent Dail chamber.
Then his party colleagues suddenly remembered their manners and broke into polite applause.
Unlike last October's Blunder Budget, there was no hearty standing ovation, no supportive cheers, no collective thumbing of noses at the Opposition.
Just a strained, perfunctory handclap of the sort awarded by a first-night audience at the theatre when they realise they've just seen a bit of a stinker which is destined to be savaged by critics and public alike.
And slumped in the middle of the stalls, three Greens -- Paul Gogarty, Ciaran Cuffe and Mary White -- didn't even applaud at all.
Brian might've commended his Blitzkrieg Budget to his aghast audience, but few seemed to find it commendable.
Such were the blizzard of cuts, chops and stabs into the heart of the middle classes, that yesterday afternoon Leinster House could've been renamed the House of the Flying Daggers.
There had been a peculiar atmosphere around the corridors in the long hours leading up to the Finance Minister's big moment.
This time around there would be no giveaways to allow government backbenchers to return to their constituencies as munificent heroes, no sugar to sweeten the bagful of bitter pills.
And for the Opposition there was scant consolation in the size of the hole that the Government had to dig itself out of. For we're all in the hole together this time.
However, the stygian gloom which shrouded Leinster House momentarily lifted during the morning, when its irrepressible Bean an Ti, Mary O'Rourke did a quick radio interview on the plinth.
She was anxious to assure the citizenry that her nephew, the Finance Minister, was in the whole of his health.
"He is getting his night's sleep, which he has done very well for the last couple of weeks," she obligingly revealed.
"And he's not taking a drink," she added comfortingly.
"That's the regime, because he comes in at seven (in the morning) and goes home at 12 every night, goes straight to bed, gets up and comes in," she said, painting the man as a veritable Trappist of power.
The tension continued to build as the hour of reckoning (literally) drew close.
And an overspill of tension must be the only charitable explanation for the tantrum thrown by various members of the Opposition, even before Brian Lenihan had risen to speak. Either that, or it was a ridiculous outbreak of political grandstanding.
As usual, the ceann comhairle kicked off proceedings by warning the assembly not to abscond with copies of the Budget statement.
"They should not be taken or sent by any means from the House before the conclusion of his statement," he ordered.
Having spotted that the row of media sitting in the press gallery were already armed with copies of the Budget before they had been distributed to the deputies in the chamber, several TDs hurled all their toys over the side of the cot.
First to his feet was Fine Gael's James Reilly. "Does that statement apply to the members of the press also? They seem to have a copy of it," he whinged.
"On a point of order, I assume the press gallery will be locked also," sniffed Labour's Kathleen Lynch.
"On a point of order, this shows the sheer arrogance of the Government towards the Opposition. As elected members of the House, they should be ashamed of themselves," chimed in Fine Gael's Paul Kehoe.
And all of a sudden a shouting match broke out on one side of the chamber.
The Taoiseach and the Finance Minister -- speech at the ready -- sat in silence and surveyed the antics on the other side.
"Can we have a response from the Taoiseach as to who made the decision to give the esteemed members in the press gallery...?" demanded Enda, as behind him the Shouting Beard was on his feet and in full swing.
"Who was responsible for this decision?" he roared, out-shouted by Bellowing Bernard Durkan close by. And Emmet Stagg stormed from the Labour benches. "I want a copy as quick as you can!" he yelled.
After several minutes of pointless shape-throwing, Eamon Gilmore rose to his feet.
"I appeal to members that we need to get on with the business," he suggested mildly, but with an expression of deep disapproval, as if he wished to push some of the more excitable members of the House over the precipice upon which the country is currently teetering.
Brian Cowen then stood up.
"That is precisely the sentiment I wished to express," he said agreeably. It was to be the last time they were in harmony for the afternoon.
Finally, Brian Lenihan began to speak.
"I want to assure the Irish people that we have the capacity, and your government has the will, to bring us out of this period of severe economic distress," he declared, before going on to deliver blow, after blow, after blow.
There was little of the catcalling or jeering that usually accompanies the reading of a Budget. Fianna Fail had learned their lesson the hard way last October when they all applauded a budget which had included removing automatic entitlement to medical cards for pensioners; and, days later, baying hordes of over-70s were howling outside the gates of Leinster House.
As the copies of the Budget were quickly distributed around the chamber, all heads were buried in its pages, speed-reading through the bad bits.
All except two heads, that is.
In the front row the Taoiseach sat, chin in his right hand, with his copy closed in front of him, gazing stone-faced across the chamber.
And right up on the back row, Bertie Ahern had slipped almost unnoticed into the last seat.
And he, too, sat, chin in his left hand, in a strange mirror-image of his successor, staring blankly across the room.
He said nothing to anyone, and slipped quickly out of the chamber when Brian's speech was over.
The former Taoiseach had stayed just long enough to see the final curtain fall on what he regards as his greatest creation, the Celtic Tiger.
Even the Opposition found it hard to put the boot in with sufficient force afterwards.
"It is the Budget from hell," said Joan Burton.
"It's truly the payback Budget -- people will have to pay back for what Fianna Fail has done to this economy over the last 12 years or so," she reckoned.
Afterwards, the two Brians hosted a press conference in government buildings. And maybe they felt there was strength in numbers, for arrayed on either side of them was the entire frontbench. It looked a little like a glum-faced version of Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Last Supper'. None at that table will claim to be a Judas Iscariot. But this morning, all around Ireland, a lot of faithful who believed this would be a tough but fair Budget will be waking up feeling very, very betrayed.
- Lise Hand
