INSIDE POLITICS - POST 233

This is my 233rd post since I set up this blog on November 1 last year. Environmentally, some of the posts have adhered to the first principle of recycling in that they have re-used (after appearing in the Examiner).

It's a Sunday evening just before 6pm and I am working from home. The really strange thing is when I go into the office tomorrow, it will be a faceless and sterile office that's at least the length of a Brendan Cummins puck-out (the Tipp hurling goalkeeper) from Leinster House.

I ended up staying in the office until after 8pm on Friday, packing files and reports, and various bits of bric and brac. I'm going to miss it (see last Thursday's post on moving here)

Anyway, earlier today when doing a bit of dawdling, I went back to the very first post I wrote. It was November 1 last year, almost a year ago. As it happens, that old rickety room right at the top of Leinster House is a star in it!

Here it is in all its glory:

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Tuesday 21 November 2007
It's 6.40pm on Tuesday evening in Leinster House. In our perch in the crow's nest at the top of the building, life is moving as slowly as a sloth whose drink has been spiked with rohypnol.
Out there beyond the lawns, beyond the city, beyond Dublin Bay, beyond the shores, there's a wider world. An anti-Syrian poltician in Lebanon has been assassinated. A Russian spy, cum refusenik, is fighting for his life in London after being poisoned by thalium. The situation in Darfur is depressing. And Iraq is Iraq - we seem innured to it nowadays unless hundreds are killed.
Here, though, there are more important fish to fry. In the television in the corner of the room, a live feed from the Dail chamber is busily churning out mostly useless verbiage. TDS are debating the Book of Estimates (Government spending plans for 2007) which was published last week. Someone is talking about AA Roadwatch and the westlink. I'm pretty sure that soon Charlie O'Connor will rise to his feet and make a long speech about Tallaght. When Tip O'Neill coined the phrase 'All politics is local', I'm sure he had the Irish parliament in mind.
When Albert Reynolds finally fell on his sword as Taoiseach, he complained that it was the little things that trip you up. That shouldn't have been any surprise. Because the little things dominate political and media discourse here to an inordinate extent. We sometimes forget how small Ireland is. The population of the entire country is less than that of many medium size cities in the US. And going back to AA Roadwatch, when you hear references to 'Hanlon's Corner' and the Red Cow Roundabout on national radio, you know about how, erm, intimate a place Ireland is.
Yep, it's as dead as vaudeville, to employ the glorious Raymond Chandler line.
A very brief introduction. I am the political editor of the Irish Examiner.
A very brief brief for this blog: Running commentary on politics.
A very brief summary of the choice of day to start it: inauspicious.
It will improve though. There is, despite the general sense of indolence here, an election in six month's time. And next week's Budget will provide - as we hacks love to write - the opening volleys etc etc.

INSIDE POLITICS - AND SOON TO BE (KIND OF OUTSIDE)

From time to time, I've written about where we political correspondents are billeted in Leinster House. We are right at the top of the old Georgain building (the main one), on the second floor. The Irish Examiner shares a small crickety room overlooking Merrion Square with the Sunday Times, The Sunday Business Post, and the irrepressible and irascible John Lee of the Irish Daily Mail. They were once servants' quarters which means they have gone very low-rent since then.

During the summer, when nothing happens, I have often compared where we are to the Overlook Hotel. That is the remote and isolated hotel in the horror film, The Shining. Sometimes during the recess it's so quiet that the only thing that livens up the day is the hourly roar from the Vikings on the Splash tour passing on nearby Merrion Square.

Well, we were all dealt a severe blow earlier this week. We were told that we had to get out of the room and within days. No it wasn't the ShannonGate story we broke this week. It was the floor. Apparently, it's a suspended floor that was hung off the rafters sometime in the middle of the 19th century. And 150 years of more of occupaton by well-fed and self-satisfied people has made one of the beams sag to a dangerous extent.

And so, there was nothing for it but to evacuate. Today is a sad day for us because we are clearing the office, with all its shabby and fading charm. We are being relocated to a modern and functional office in Setanta House near the Kilkenny centre. It's only three minutes away from Leinster House but it feels like an aeon away. As we looked at it today, we all that the dread feeling that sitting over there we are definitely going to be out of the loop.

But there's nothing we can do about it except grin and bear it. It will keep us relatively fit as we'll have to sprint back and forth for briefings and for whatever bit of crumbs we can get from chit-chat meetings on the corridors of power!

Civil servants have resisted. But unfortunately, in spite of our best efforts, we have been decentralised.

Ok, we're still here for the last day but there's nothing much to report. The Greens will be voting in their chairperson this evening. Dan Boyle looks the favourite but there's a slight anti-establishmentarian wing in the party that want to keep the pro-Government majority in check. And I expect Bronwyn Maher to do well, though Boyle must be odds-on favourite.

Elsewhere, Bertie is giving his annual Bodenstown speech next Sunday. That's always a curious and quaint affair - men in felt hats, a lone bugle, and a Bertie speech that doesn't mention how lucky we have been to have him as Taoiseach for the past ten years.

In fact, the quality of speech at Bodenstown is always very good... so good in fact that sometimes you could imagine it could be de Valera delivering it!

INSIDE POLITICS - HAPPY TO MEET, SORRY TO PART

Two-way traffic in Leinster House today. A couple of brand new TDs arriving in to get their first viewing of their new home. They were accompanied by their families and all had a happy, brimful of enthusiasm, sense about them.

There was a sadder procession going the other way. I met five or six of those who lost their seats, arriving in the Dail to collect their belongings. They were all putting a brave face on it, being philosophical. But you knew that deep down for each of them, it really hurt. The vast majority of people who are in politics are innately likeable and not to have that likeability validated is a blow for them.

To be sure, it's a cruel game. Losing your seat is horrible, no matter who you are, no matter what you stand for. The reasons they have lost out have little to do with them - they suffer because of a mood-shift or antipathy to their party's policies or whatever - but you know that there is still a powerful feeling of rejection.

Some 30 TDs lost their seats this time round. There are very very few of them about whom you'd say, good riddance.