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— village November - December 2009
albertie for president So it’s
official: School Marm, Mary O’Rourke, who
was Deputy Leader of Fianna Fáil in ,
has confirmed Albert’s worst cynicism about
Bertie knifing him over the Presidency: “We
were by the then Taoiseach. It was said
ambiguously and round the bushes – but the
message was quite clear that Mary McAleese
was a fine person”. In the land of Bertiespeak,
that would have been at the clear end of the
scale. Will be interesting how Cowen, once
a leading member of Reynold’s country and
western set will handle any analagous pot by
Bertie at the presidency.
from bush to lamp-post Fianna
Fáil may have thought they would never
see the image of Bertie Ahern on a party
political poster again but during the Lisbon
II referendum battle the Ahern moniker
was on lamp-posts throughout his Dublin
Central bailiwick. The former Taoiseach’s
enthusiasm for the campaign trail is all
the more commendable in the light of the
apparent reluctance of his own party to tap
into the legendary campaigning abilities of
the most popular Taoiseach in the history of
the modern state and one of Ireland’s most
successful EU Presidents. Deputy Ahern did
refrain from commenting on the anxiety
of FF to secure the support of more minor
deities such as Garret Fitzgerald. But whilst
in a belated but terse response to claims that
Mr Ahern was being “frozen out”, a junior
FF press officer said “the Lisbon campaign
is being led by the party’s senior personnel”,
Bertie has not been in any way affected by
the apparent snub. Instead Mr Ahern told
Yer Man he had been engaged in regular
“canvass sessions of over two hours, hopping
around on the old leg”. Contrary to popular
(and, in some circles, hopeful) belief, the
legendary machine built by the Drumcondra
mafia (Bertie first climbed lamp-posts in the
Lemass era) is still in full working order to
the extent that during the campaign, teams
of canvassers left St Luke’s three times a
day. And, whatever about his presidential
bid, Bertie left Cowen out of his spiel at his
book launch. However, confusingly, the two
fathers of Ireland’s collapse were seen over
late-night pints in a hotel in New York, not
long before.
finance insider Still no news on the
mysterious balaclava-masked subversive
who allegedly broke a window with a
firebomb in the Department of Finance’s
elegant quarters on Merrion St, or of the
elegant female who passed around the same
time. Yer Man is of the view that, given the
contempt in which that Department holds
the public it is in fact more likely that the
bomb was aimed at the general population
and ... came from within.
abolishing themselves So the
world’s least charismatic leader of the
opposition (and Dáil Éireann’s ninth highest
claimant of expenses) is proposing the
abolition of the Seanad and a reduction in
TDs. Of course it’s easy to say that at two
elections’ remove from actually being able to
implement the change. If it continues like this
we may finish up with something approaching
streamlined, sensible government. The
problem for Cowen, Kenny and their ilk is
that there is no reason to think streamlined,
sensible government would have any place for
discredited and cosseted wastrels like them.
depending on the ‘kindness of
strangers’
At Christmas it is traditional
to raise a glass to empty spaces at the
table. Unfortunately, when it comes to that
increasingly rare species the ‘friend of Cowen’,
if things continue at the current rate the only
person who will be at the FF Christmas party
will be poor BIFFO. Nothing epitomised the
current status of the Taoiseach more than
the response of the faithful to Mr Cowen’s
emotional plea at the party ‘think-in’ that
he needed the ‘help, support and counsel’ of
the FF back-benchers. Worse still, two days
after this and after some hooha from the IFA
outside, the absence of any applause from
FF after the Taoiseach’s speech on NAMA,
was notable. In contrast – and of course Yer
Man doesn’t want to cause any trouble here
- Brian Lenihan received a sustained round
of applause from the party’s overflowing
benches. However, the most extraordinary
snub of all was the swathe of empty spaces
on the FF benches when Mr Cowen spoke.
There again perhaps the lads were far too
busy dealing with such critical legislative
activities as watching the racing channel in
the Dail bar.
biffo overdoes it but only at
paddy’s day
Mr Cowen is one of the
more parsimonious Ministers with annual
expenses of just over €,. Yer Man is
not one who feels Biffo’s drinking is a matter
of national emergency but he did, however,
observe one oddity – from a strictly fiscal
perspective you understand, for whilst Mr
Cowen’s outlay was modest, there was a major
spike in expenditure during the St Patrick’s
Day Diaspora. The pattern was set by Mr
Cowen’s first trip to Atlanta, Georgia, where
the expenditure of €,. represented
a hefty % of that year’s ‘subsistence’ bill.
This, however, was easily surpassed by his
trip to Australia which cost €, whilst in
the St Patrick’s Day trip to Chicago cost
€,.. Yer man is sure that Mr Cowen
would prefer to spend the day standing on
a milk float in Clara rather than celebrating
the Irish connection to Malaysia.
In the Dáil
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village_oct_09.indd 10 27/10/2009 15:37:34
