Many hugs emerge to banish awful images of nudey swimming TDs

SKETCH:TREADING WATER on a cold afternoon in Leinster House, trying to keep up with the difficult concept of structural deficit during questions to the Minister for Finance.

It was heavy going. Cramp inducing stuff.

Fianna Fáil’s Michael McGrath wanted to know what provision was being made by the Government to reduce its structural deficit in line with the new EU fiscal treaty. It seems we will have to knuckle down and deliver this multi-billion euro reduction in our debt to GDP ratio when the bailout programme finishes in 2015.

Or something like that.

Michael Noonan launched into an equally baffling reply. He agreed that “the concept of a structural deficit is difficult to understand in the first place”. So he decided to simplify it. Noonan style.

“You remember the Warren Buffett quotation: that it’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked?” he began, as monitoring journalists snapped to attention.

Swimming in the nip? This sounded far more interesting than GDP ratios and MTO’s (medium term objectives.) “Ya know, you should reflect on that experience of your Government” drawled the Minister with a dirty little grin, “because Fianna Fáil and the Greens were supposed to have been running surpluses for several years. But they were actually running structural deficits when all the headline figures suggested surpluses and the tide went out, ya know, and they were left naked with the waves lapping around their ankles with nowhere to go”. Steady on there Minister. With all this talk of nudey swimming, have you never heard of the watershed? “And the reason was that all the transactional taxes coming from the property industry were part of the cycle and weren’t a permanent feature of the tax system, so that all disappeared and you got this huge deficit. So I mean, if you think of it in those terms I think structural deficits and structural surpluses are easier to understand.” Not really. But Michael looked mightily pleased with himself and his explanation.

Michael McG didn’t know where to look.

Whereupon they all moved onto a question from Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty about job creation. But we couldn’t, struggling as we were with this horrendous image of Buffo in the biff, sorry, Biffo in the buff, along with the rest of his cabinet ministers, and them freezing their portfolios off on some windswept strand with not so much as a pair of Speedos between them. May God forgive you, Michael Noonan.

It was time to think of nice things like manly hugs, so naturally, Enda at Leaders’ Questions came immediately to mind.

He was in great form, confidently working his way through the proceedings.

When a Fine Gael leader is in such good spirits it often indicates he is nursing a happy feeling that the old enemy might be in a spot of trouble. He could be right, although its early days yet.

There is much musing around Leinster House about what Fianna Fáil is up to with its gung-ho approach to holding a referendum on the treaty. With the staunchly pro-Europe Micheál Martin leading the charge at the head of his staunchly pro-Europe party, what would he do if he got his wish for a referendum?

By all accounts, many in Fianna Fáil are struggling with the answer to that question. If Micheál’s speculative punt were to land on target, he could find himself in a very difficult situation while Sinn Féin runs happily with the outcome. This would explain Enda’s jibe at the Fianna Fáil leader after he got very hot under the collar over the impact on frontline services due to retirements in the public service.

“Actually, there’s no need for Deputy Martin to become hysterical just because he is under pressure from those on his right hand side over there.” How they laughed in Sinn Féin.

Micheál was not amused. But he must be aware that people are talking, and they’re saying that his stance on the referendum question is more to do with outflanking the Shinners than anything else. But while Gerry Adams and company are in their comfort zone with this latest spot of agitation, Micheál and troops are just agitated.

Adams wasn’t present yesterday as he was attending the funeral of his friend of 40 years, “wee” Harry Thompson. Mary Lou McDonald stepped into the breach and set off at a lively trot down Referendum Road.

“You try to spoof the people by referring this treaty to the Attorney General, but in reality, what you’ve tried to create is a pre-cooked deal.” Enda responded with something he had prepared earlier. It was a measure of his confidence that he was willing to return to the previous day’s discussion of his “buddy buddy” act with Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday.

Adams had expressed his disgust at having to witness the way Enda and Nicolas exchanged bracing thumps by way of greeting, while Joe Higgins was also appalled by the touchy-feely images he saw from Brussels.

The Taoiseach revisited the scene. “I forgot to remind your leader yesterday, when he was talking about the ‘buddy’ situation, that he actually gave me some kind of a bear hug during the course of the leaders’ debates before the last election. He seems to have a selective amnesia occasionally,” he told Mary Lou.

“Bear hug!” cried a backbencher, before someone came up with the obvious quip.

“Grizzly Adams.” Tactile Enda was so tickled he stopped the rest of his reply. “Yeah, Grizzly Adams . . . Grizzly Adams, yeah,” he smirked, bringing the house down.

In times of recession, sometimes even the bear necessities can raise a smile.