BERTIE Ahern and John O’Donoghue are locked together now and for ever in the history of our times for being two outwardly endearing but inwardly flawed political leaders who were forced to resign from their high public office over money scandals that not even their fellow Fianna Fáil ministers and backbenchers could defend.
Yet, far from carrying the disgraces of their respective falls from the offices of Taoiseach and Ceann Comhairle, both Bertie and ‘the Bull’ continue to strut the role of martyrs and proclaim their ambitions of being vindicated in a future ballot box, in the former’s case, being elected President of Ireland in 2012; as for the latter, he nurses the ambition of being returned to the Dáil in his Kerry constituency at the next general election. The chances of that general election being held off until 2012 appear to be have been lengthened by the reviewed Programme for Government cobbled together on Friday evening by Fianna Fáil and the Greens. The most unpopular administration in over a generation is gritting its teeth to cling on to its life-boat in spite of the economic tempest pouring down mercilessly on this once green and pleasant land.
Green Party leader John Gormley can crow about the review being “transformational in nature” for Irish society, and Taoiseach Brian Cowen can proclaim the carpet-baggers’ deal as “a vibrant, pragmatic and comprehensive programme” and “a blueprint to meet the challenges we now face”.
But what can the hard-pressed electorate expect from this ‘blueprint? For a start, we can eagerly look-forward to a •175 demand notice from the Department of the Environment for water charges - yes, you read correctly - it will merely be a services charge, not a tax.
Paying for water will be a consoling comfort for the unemployed facing cuts in social welfare payments in the December Budget. Do not despair, however. The good news is that the water charge may not be ready this side of Christmas, but anyway, you will be hit by a carbon tax.
Parents of third-level students will no doubt be relieved to be told that this intrepid Government will not increase college fees, but will find little comfort in the ministerial nod-and-a-wink to college heads to bump up their already bloated •1,500 registration fees.
The litany of woes is there in the fine-print of the blueprint, especially the triumphant success of the Greens in abolishing corporate donations to political parties - but the rub is that wealthy businessmen will be able to continue endowing political parties from their own personal largess - and instead of our legislators passing this in law immediately in the Oireachtas, a quango in the form of the of the Electoral Commission will have a leisurely year in which to hone its proposals.
Alas, for Gormley, who was tetchy and a trifle uppity with Richard Crowley on RTE’s This Week-end Programme, this epic blueprint saw the light of day just as the Sunday Tribune’s public affairs correspondent, Ken Foxe, delivered us his latest instalment into the fabulous lifestyles enjoyed by the big-spenders in Government.
Gormley, the nation’s most avid bicyclist, enjoyed a chauffeur-driven car which was despatched on a five-hour mission from London to collect him and his duffle-bag from the Holyhead ferry and which clocked-up
•2,200 over two-days of sight-seeing - no, no, it was to meet a heavy schedule of Government business! And it was all the fault of the beastly Embassy in London who did no consult him on such an expensive mode of transport!
Red-faced Gormley had also to admit availing on another occasion of the infamous “airport transfers”, where a car was dispatched from central London to pick him up at one terminal in Heathrow airport to drop him off at another one. Such costly hipfops will not recur in post- Blueprint Ireland.
Not to be outdone by the bicyclist, Transport minister Noel Dempsey endured the wilds of Houston, San Antonio and San Francisco with his wife Bernadette and three civil servants during a St Patrick's Day trip two years ago to the US at the bargain price of •70,000 for first and business class flights for himself and his wife.
Lo and behold, this biggest spender was Health minister Mary Harney, whose appetite for flying on the Government jet cost taxpayers •735,000 during 12 de luxe jaunts abroad over 30 months, this being exclusive of a further tab for hotels and limousine hire for herself and her husband Brian Geoghegan of •65,000.
Nor did Bertie, the presiding circus master over these Government junkets in the golden decade when the country was in the safe hands of himself and Charlie McCrevvy, do too badly in the line of itinerant duty. He slummed for Ireland in the London’s exclusive Dorchester Hotel for a mere •2,400 for one night, which was a come-down of
•600 for the cost of a single night in Brussels. It must have been a deprivation from his local pub Fagan’s in Drumcondra when Bertie, accompanied by John O'Donoghue, then minister for arts, sport and tourism, and Mary Hanafin, then education minister, TD Donie Cassidy and about two dozen others, notched up •28,704 during a frugal supper at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, while on a trade - not aid - mission to India.
On the menu for us ordinary mortals outside the political class is the forced forking up the bill for the setting up of the National Asset Management Agency, Nama, now that 84 per cent of the 600-plus Green Party delegates backed the revised programme that supports their cherished ban on the importation of live animals for circuses. Will this include a ban on the return of ministers from global jet-setting, I wonder?
Much ink is being spent on whether the Greens ‘out-foxed’ Fianna Fáil or whether Biffo has ensnared ‘the furry brigade’ into the Government bunker for another two-and-half years. This is academic: the deal is mutually beneficial. Both sides have bought time from a smouldering electorate.
Labour’s Eamon Gilmore, basking in the scalp of John O’Donoghue, and Fine Gael’s Enda Kenny, being called ‘the altar boy’ for being too decent to plunge the axe into O’Donoghue, must wait longer for the Day of Retribution.
Meanwhile, still in total denial of the mess he left behind, is the former Taoiseach, who is enjoying celebrity status promoting his book, Bertie Ahern: The Autobiography, which I shall return to once I’ve fully recovered from digesting its contents at one sitting.
It was one of the most topsy-turvy weeks in Irish politics for a long time. It was as if the Lisbon referendum had never taken place. We lost a Ceann Comhairle who had to go - and taxpayers were given a blank cheque from Planet Gormley.
The abiding moment of the week, as Fine Gael’s enterprise spokesman, Leo Varadkar noted, Gormley was unable to say how much the renegotiated Programme for Government is going to cost. Leo, my boy, you might know your sums but you don’t know politics: the costs will be worked out “as part of a budgetary process”.
Well, as the late John ‘Backbencher’ Healy would have retorted: “John, it will cost you votes when the snipe-grass gets its day in the sun for keeping Fianna Fáil in power.”
Principle be damned. We shall all suffer.
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