Constituencies kerfuffle peters out; Healy-Rae takes to campaign trail; Shannon's suffering mounts; McCullough's report endangered by panda; e-mail dishes out medicine to health services; media heavyweights threaten Ceann Comhairle
The nation may have been agog with indifference at the two big events this week in Leinster House, but it didn't stop the politicians from working themselves into a state. They always do, when the subject at issue is themselves.
First came the report of the constituency commission, due at lunchtime on Tuesday. Jittery TDs spent the previous few days persecuting political correspondents for "any leaks". As it transpired, the commission ran a watertight ship. So when the appointed time drew near, deputies swarmed around the front office like mullet around a sewerage outlet.
In the event, the changes were minimal. Deputies from Limerick and Kerry had most to worry about, while representatives from Dún Laoghaire remained philosophical about the inevitable loss of a seat.
"As of this moment, I am representing Abbeyfeale!" declared Fine Gael's Jimmy Deenihan, setting out his stall. At the next election, his Kerry North constituency becomes Kerry North/West Limerick. This is not to be confused with the current constituency of Limerick West, which is no more, much to the disgust of sitting FF TD John Cregan, who says he will lose at least 3,000 votes with the move into Limerick.
Also unhappy is Willie O'Dea, who will go from Limerick East to Limerick City. The Minister for Defence was complaining that 4,000 votes will be cut out from under him. Unlike those deputies for whom the changes might spell the difference between winning and losing a seat, Cpl O'Dea is more concerned with protecting his position as one of the top two vote-getters in the country.
The second issue concentrating minds was the announcement of the committee chairmanships. The public couldn't care less, but the recipients of chairs get a €20,000 stipend (pensionable) on top of their salary. Starting salary for a brand new baby TD is €95,000, before allowances and expenses.
In distributing the posts, Bertie Ahern cannot be accused of ageist tendencies. Three of the lucrative positions went to former Fianna Fáil ministers Michael Woods (71) and Mary O'Rourke (70), both of whom have already amassed stupendously large Oireachtas pensions, while Independent deputy Jackie Healy-Rae (76) was rewarded for his support of the Government with the chair of the social and family affairs committee.
Jackie is certainly taking his new brief seriously, concentrating at the moment on the family end of things.
His son, Cllr Michael Healy-Rae, was a contestant in RTÉ's charity programme Celebrities Go Wild, which finished last night. Jackie e-mailed every Senator and TD in the Oireachtas on Wednesday, canvassing their support for the young fella. Yesterday, as the final showdown approached, Jackie stepped up the campaign, this time targeting all Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael staff. "I am asking for your support for my son Michael Healy-Rae who is at present taking part in the 2007 RTÉ People in Need Telethon. This is the last night and Michael has gone through all the challenges so far, now the end is in sight. Michael is one of the three remaining contestants and he has a real chance to win this. I am asking each and everyone to vote for Michael today . . .
"Please text 'Wild Michael' . . ."
Woe upon woe for the people of Shannon and the surrounding area, following upon the ending of their Aer Lingus service to Heathrow. On the large glossy map of Ireland accompanying the report of the Constituency Commission, the Shannon estuary has also been redrawn. In fact, it's been done away with all together, rather like the service to Heathrow.
The entire estuary, if the map is correct, will be one big landfill area come the next election. Have the civil servants informed the relevant Minister? Surely Willie O'Dea has been told?
As events in the High Court demonstrated this week, delivering the news can be fraught with difficulty. Take David McCullough, RTÉ's political correspondent, who has to cope regularly with gas tickets who try to get their grinning faces into the frame while he is in the middle of a live report.
The favoured spot for delivering these reports is the pavement outside the Merrion Hotel, where the grandeur of Government Buildings provides a fitting backdrop. On Thursday afternoon, as McCullough prepared for the six o'clock news, he got a tip-off from a Labour Party source that a panda was planning to invade his broadcasting space.
Sure enough, as he made his way across to the satellite van, he spotted a panda lurking in the distance. Following a quick word with the gardaí outside Leinster House, disappointed Mr Panda was kept out of shot by the long arm of the law.
When the camera stopped rolling, a deadpan David commented, "this is not a black and white issue". To be fair to Danny "Panda", a first-year arts student in UCD, he had no intention of interfering with the broadcast. He was trying to complete the first of five dares, having called Today FM's Ray D'arcy Show to say he hired a panda costume for a Halloween party, and as he had it for the week it seemed a waste not to get more wear out of it.
Ray asked listeners to come up with five suggestions as to what Danny might do. The first, to get on telly by walking past the camera during a live news broadcast, didn't work out. However, Danny (20) was successful with his four remaining dares. He travelled on the Luas and gazed wistfully out the window. He went to FAI headquarters and handed in his CV for the Ireland football manager's job. He went to the make-up counter in Brown Thomas and asked if they could do anything about his panda eyes. Finally, he went to the Stillorgan dual carriageway, holding up a sign saying "Zoo", and successfully thumbed a lift.
The following e-mail is doing the rounds at the moment. Either somebody in the VHI has too much time on their hands, or someone in the HSE has decided laughter is the best medicine, in the absence of a consultant's appointment or an A&E bed.
"Once upon a time it was resolved to have a boat race between a VHI team and a HSE team. Both teams practised long and hard. On the big day they were as ready as they could be. The VHI team won by a mile.
"Morale sagged in the HSE and senior management determined to find out why they lost. A working party was set up to investigate.
"They concluded that their rivals had eight people rowing and one person steering, whereas the HSE competitors had eight people steering and one person rowing.
"Senior management immediately hired a consultancy firm to study the team's structure. Thousands of pounds and several months later they concluded: 'Too many people were steering and not enough rowing.'
With a view to establishing a vision for victory going forward, the team structure was changed: three 'Assistant Steering Managers', three 'Steering Managers', one 'Executive Steering Manager' and a 'Director of Steering Services'. Then a performance and appraisal system was put in place to give the person rowing the boat more incentive to work harder.
"The next year, VHI won by two miles. "Addressing the issue head on, going forward, the HSE laid off the rower for poor performance, sold off the paddles, cancelled all capital investment in new equipment and halted development of a new canoe.
"The money saved was used to fund higher than average pay awards to senior management."
Consternation among the journalistic quality. These are the "Pol Corrs" who breathe the more rarified air of the upper reaches of Leinster House. Actually, it might be more correct to say they are housed in the attic, in conditions on the genteel side of squalor.
Unfortunately, their media heavyweight status is proving a problem. The ancient floor is about to give way under them. In the normal course of events, the imminent collapse of the pol corrs' room would be an occasion of great joy among politicians and those people who set the rules and run the house.
However, if they go through the floor, they will land on top of Ceann Comhairle John O'Donoghue, among others. The Bull is housed, in some luxury, in an office below.
And so last week, the journalistic quality were requested to move in order for renovations to begin. But they are not at all happy, as they have to move out of Leinster House to a temporary billet above the passport office in Molesworth Street.
There are dark mutterings of ulterior motives, and opportunist bids to snaffle their wonderfully located lodgings for the Civil Service. Passions are running high.
To this end, a meeting of the Oireachtas press gallery has been convened for Wednesday by gallery chairman, Eoin "Boris Beag" Ó Murchú, the political editor of Raidió na Gaeltachta.
It is not true that the Taoiseach has been seen lighting candles in the Pro Cathedral in the hopes of securing the right outcome to Wednesday's meeting - a full-scale office sit-in by the media heavyweights, and the rest of their scurvy colleagues.