Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

Far from standing up for standards, he is sitting neatly beside the Taoiseach today. Admittedly, his demeanour is rather tombstone like, without the moonlight even. However, since his appointment two weeks ago, Deputy McDowell is trying to work hard to have us believe he has no previous history in Government, that he has not been in Government for ten years, and that he has no responsibility for the billions of euro in stamp duty and the rest. He wants us to believe he is a political newborn, dropped by a stork, perhaps, into a basket outside Government Buildings two weeks ago, with Deputy O'Donnell playing along as the besotted nurse fetchingly referring to him as Michael, if one does not mind. That is somewhat different from the name she was spitting out two months ago from behind clenched teeth, when Michael was trying to take the PD rattler from Mary. What has the Tánaiste said to the Taoiseach about this and will he make a statement?

The image which Fianna Fáil has carefully cultivated of the Taoiseach, who is on €250,000 per annum, is that of an ordinary, struggling man like the rest of the ordinary people out there. This image has taken a fierce battering. Ordinary people do not have wealthy friends to do a whip around and the myth that Fianna Fáil is somehow the ordinary working person's party will hopefully end with this episode, where rich people come to the assistance of senior politicians.

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