Button-Gate offers light relief from the darkness of Brexit

World of Politics with Harry McGee  – harrymcgee@gmail.com

When we were doing Macbeth for the Leaving Cert, a big thing was the Night Porter scene. Essentially, he comes into the action, sandwiched between two bouts of gruesome murders and throws out a couple of allegedly funny lines.

The point was he provided ‘comic relief’, a moment to ease all the darkness and the tension, or else to remind us off it – which brings to mind Button-Gate, the comic relief for the gruesome Brexit tragedy.

It came to light over the weekend when it emerged that the Limerick Fianna Fáil TD Niall Collins had voted six times for his friend and colleague, Clare TD Timmy Dooley, while the latter was out of the chamber. By Tuesday it had become farcical.

The Dáil has an electronic voting system. Each seat has three buttons on it, Tá, Níl and Staon (Abstain). When a vote is called, the bells ring out all over the Dáil. TDs have ten minutes to get into the chamber. The doors are then locked.

Each TD has a designated seat. When they press the button it shows up as a green light (Tá), red light (Níl) or blue light (Staon) on a giant screen above the chamber. There is literally a graphic of how the votes went.

Any TD who has been there for a while will have a fair idea who sits where. It’s not hard to spot that a light has lit up for an empty chair – and that’s how Timmy Dooley and Niall Collins were found out.

That incident has spawned a cascade of allegations since then. By Sunday Lisa Chambers had to explain why she voted for Dara Calleary on the same day. Her excuse was that it was a genuine mistake.

Her designated seat is next to Calleary’s and she sat in his seat by mistake. After realising she had voted for him, she went back into her own seat and voted for herself. However, she failed to alert the Clerk of the Dáil of her mistake.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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