A few readers might recall that during a former lifetime, back around the turn of the century, I used to write the Dáil Sketch twice a week.
But in the 20 years and five-and-a-bit months since becoming Irishman’s Diarist, I had never darkened the gate of Leinster House again until this week. And when I went back last Tuesday, for a sketching cameo, it was not without foreboding.
Irish literature is full of stories about long-delayed returns or homecomings, none of which end well. Anne Enright’s The Gathering, for example. Brian Friel’s Aristocrats. Oisín falling off the horse.
On the plus side, I didn’t feel 300 years older suddenly. Nor did I find the old house crumbling or get into any family rows.
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But in some ways, the Dáil had changed beyond recognition in my decades away. Back in 2006, remember, Irish politics was still a two-and-a-half party system: the old Civil War combatants and Labour.
There was also a thing then called the Progressive Democrats – whatever happened to them? And the main opposition party, I seem to recall, was Joe Higgins. All that has been swept away. But in other ways, the place is the same as ever.
The Opposition still sits to the right of the Ceann Comhairle, the Government to the left. This differs not just from the British system but also the whole model of left-right representative democracy, as established in pre-revolutionary France, when the “Second Estate” (the nobility) sat to the King’s right.
Post-Revolution, the Jacobins sat on the left of the chamber, with moderates lower down (on the “plaine”) and radicals up at the back (the “montagne”). In the Dáil, the lefties are all still on the right.
As for the Fourth Estate, as Edmund Burke called it, the press remains where it always was too, seated on what looks like a choir balcony above the Ceann Comhairle’s head.
There, time is forever frozen circa 1993. Or so you would think from the brass nameplates indicating where each media outlet can sit. Featured titles include “The Irish Press” and the “Cork Examiner”. There is still no mention of “Joe.ie”.
One alarming new development, as a colleague had warned, was that the gallery door is now permanently locked. You need a fob to get in and out, something not available to day trippers.
So one of the regular reporters had to let me in. Then I had to be careful not to be the last person left – as was often the case before – or I might still be there.
Mind you, unlike the public gallery, the press one is not glassed off. As always, there remains the emergency option of climbing over the desks and jumping down into the chamber, a route famously taken by three Workers Party TDs in 1982 when they found themselves locked out of the Dáil for a crucial vote.
The creaky floorboards of Leinster House haven’t changed either. And wandering through the corridors, with their low ceilings and high carpets, brought a familiar claustrophobia. This seems to have been a common experience even for distant former residents.
In 1794, the ill-fated Lord Edward Fitzgerald wrote home from what was then the family’s city residence complaining about how “melancholy” it seemed: “A poor country housemaid I brought with me [from Kildare] cried for two days and thought she was in prison.”
His sister, returning in 1812 after years of the house’s decline under the Act of Union, was dispirited at how cold and dark it had become. Finding her way by candlelight to the master bedroom, she complained it was “now more like a convent” than a nobleman’s house.
You wouldn’t mistake it for a convent today, if only because of the shortage of women. Still, there are more of those than there used to be: new paintings in the corridors since my last visit include one of 53 women TDs and senators.
Another ancient tradition that hasn’t changed is backbench TDs using the Order of Business debate to raise points of order that aren’t points of order, to the exasperation of the chair.
The prime example on Tuesday was Danny Healy-Rae – sitting up among the montagnards – drawing attention to the chaos caused on the roads of Kerry and elsewhere by wild deer mounting kamikaze attacks on traffic.
Also in keeping with tradition, the Ceann Comhairle had to slap him down verbally like a bold child, but not before he gained the usual 15 seconds of Oireachtas TV fame.
Speaking of which, yet another thing that hadn’t changed since my last visit is that male journalists are still required to wear a tie. Male TDs, meanwhile, can plead conscientious objection to such tyranny, as increasing numbers do.
But I didn’t take any chances, having learned my lesson years ago when dispatched to cover a mere Oireachtas committee meeting once. Rather than offend the dignity of the house with my open-necked shirt, I was banished to watch proceedings on a monitor in what felt like a broom cupboard.
