Independent TD Finian McGrath has called on Mary Harney to meet him after Dail today for a punch-up over the medical card issue.

Not content with simply withdrawing support for the government the Dublin North-Central TD has promised supporters that he’ll give the Minister for Health the ‘kicking she deserves’. A friend of McGrath’s told the Irish Sentinel, “He is spewing over the medical card issue, like any right minded person, but for him this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. After the session yesterday he went after Harney bull-headed in the corridors of Leinster House and claimed her. He kept pushing her in the chest and saying ‘Come on then. Come on. Fight me. Come on, chicken. Are you chicken?’, before making squawking noises and flapping his arms like a farmyard bird.

Harney to avoid being a Joey

It was a very tense scene. All the other TDs, led by Enda Kenny, were standing around shouting ‘A-G, A-G-R, A-G-R-O, AGRO!’ but Harney was having none of it. Finian told her to meet him outside the Dail bar at 4pm where they’d have a scrap in front of everyone”.

It remains to be seen whether or not the Minister will turn up or whether she’ll be a cowardy-custard – but insiders tell us that if she doesn’t fight she’ll be putting the final nail in her political coffin. “People can tolerate somebody being absolutely terrible at their job. This is Ireland, after all. But if she doesn’t at least try to duff up McGrath then she’s going to look like a complete Joey Deacon and nobody is ever going to vote for a Joey, despite his kitsch value these days”.

If the bout of inter-party fisticuffs does go ahead it will be the first time a Minister has taken on an Independent since Ray Burke wedgied Tony Gregory in 1986 and then bent his arm behind his back until the Dublin Central TD was forced to ’submit’. Gregory calmly waited years for his revenge, having Burke thrashed by inner-city prison guards when he was jailed in 2005 for irregularties in his tax returns.