For those not familiar with Maurice Doyle, there is an anecdote that illuminates the mindset of a man who this week addressed the Dail Committee of Public Accounts (PAC) as though he was the headmaster and they were a bunch of errant, and not very enlightened, pupils.
Back when Doyle was a high-ranking civil servant in the Department of Finance, a meeting was scheduled between him and the former minister for labour Michael O'Leary. As they entered the room, the story goes, O'Leary threw his jacket across to Doyle, expecting him to hang it up. With hardly a pause, Doyle threw it right back at O'Leary. Yes, Minister, has never been Maurice Doyle's style.
Doyle is an intensely private person but when he chooses, or in the case of the DIRT scandal he is forced to open up, he makes the most of the opportunity. His precise, well-spoken voice and superior demeanour made great television as he told the committee investigating the bogus offshore accounts where he thought the blame might lie.
More than 120 people had been interviewed for a report into the non-resident accounts scandal, he said. "Not one of them is a politician. Am I invited to believe no politician had any knowledge or connection with the events of that whole decade? It's news to me, that is all I can say," he added. Then the punch-line: an anti-evasion clause in the 1983 Budget had been removed by the then finance minister, Alan Dukes, "against the advice of officials".
"Let's just say he has never tried to hide his impatience with politicians," said one former senior member of government. He added that anyone who knew him would not have been surprised by his performance in the PAC. "As a civil servant he had no political bias, he hated them all," said another source.
He had been called before the Dail Committee of Public Accounts as governor of the Central Bank in 1992, but at that time there was no statutory legislation that compelled him to attend. Doyle refused and the chairman, Jim Mitchell, complained that Doyle had given "the Harvey Smith" to the committee.
The incident occurred after Doyle had made one of his most controversial assertions as governor. In a speech on unemployment he told Trinity College's Philosophical Society that there was no point in pretending that that all of the then 300,000 people registered as unemployed were "genuinely without work, currently available for work, and taking specific steps to find work".
His comments caused public derision, although acquaintances say the following extract from a letter in this newspaper would have mattered little to a man who pays no attention to criticism: "I find his arrogance and self-righteousness quite nauseating." There was even a 15-member protest organised by the INOU outside the Central Bank which urged Doyle to apologise for his comments or resign. "Big Mo must Go" was one of the more memorable slogans.
Smart. Arrogant. Forceful. Superior. Acerbic. Tough. These are the words used to describe Doyle by former colleagues and politicians. "He was not afraid to speak his mind, which caused problems sometimes, and he had a very corrosive wit which he used freely," said one source.
The career path of this razor-sharp civil servant was relatively smooth. Born in 1932 in Dublin, he attended O'Connell's CBS and went on to gain an economics degree in UCD. This was followed by a law degree, and in 1953 he joined the Civil Service as administrative officer.
He spent two years in the Revenue Commissioners before beginning work on the first national development plan under T.K. Whitaker in 1958. His talent was duly noted and Doyle was soon appointed assistant principal in the Department, rising to assistant secretary in 1971 and secretary 10 years later.
When appointed Central Bank governor in 1987, in the tradition of Department of Finance secretaries taking this position, he was determined to make a stamp on the office. He did so immediately by dint of his personality; he cycled to work every day, swam during his lunch hour and worked harder on being correct than he did on being politically correct. One source said: "It was clear all the time that even the highest banking job in the land didn't take much out of him . . . it was as though he could have done the job in half a day because of his ability and energy."
His tenure at the bank was characterised by his refusal to sway from his beliefs - he raised and lowered interest rates as he saw fit and he was an energetic opponent of the devaluation of the pound. He defended the pound as a member of the "currency war cabinet" established when the Exchange Rate Mechanism began to fall apart in 1992. But even Doyle, a fighter, knew when he was beaten and the following year the pound was devalued. "There is a point when devotion to duty ends and persistent stupidity begins," he said at the time. "His advice was always in the right direction," said one politician who came into contact with him. "But it did require political action from several governments" to calm the currency crisis.
He rarely gave interviews but the public got to know him better than any other governor through high-profile and sometimes controversial speeches. At his most Euro-sceptic he strongly criticised what he saw as a European Commission that didn't care about Irish economic needs with the words "Ireland did not join the EC to become the Appalachia of Western Europe".
He ended his seven-year term as governor in 1994. Since then he has worked for a short time on the Luas project at the behest of Alan Dukes and has been president of the ESRI. Doyle lives with his wife, Mavis, in Clonskeagh - the couple have four grown-up children. He is an accomplished pianist and relaxes by listening to classical music. His friends would mostly be from the finance and banking scene.
Another former senior politician thought Doyle's evidence this week "a little overdone and it gave the wrong impression more in terms of what he didn't say than what he did". It remains to be seen whether Doyle will be called back to explain himself further. If he is, what he says is almost guaranteed to cause discomfort in some sectors but it will also be well worth hearing.