The Last Straw: I take Tom Parlon's point that he wasn't paid for endorsing a brand of calf nuts in a national newspaper. He was acting as a farmer rather than a Government minister, apparently. He says he just believed in the product, because it led to dramatic weight gain in his weanlings, and because the producer was providing a lot of employment locally. Fair enough. My farming contacts tell me those are good nuts alright.
But there's a tendency in this country to see agriculture as a worthy cause rather than a business. Acting in his capacity as a parent, a politician could believe equally in the Happy Meal, which also creates a lot of employment and can lead to dramatic weight gain in your weanlings. Yet a picture of him chomping a hamburger wouldn't have any of the heroic dignity of Mr Parlon clutching a bag of calf nuts. There's a double standard here.
Besides, you'd fear that the Parlon precedent could be the thin end of a wedge. Irish politics is like the GAA. I'm not saying it has an amateur ethos - certainly not after the recent pay rise - but it's a fundamental of both codes that participants are not motivated primarily by commercial gain. Personal glory, maybe. The pride of the parish. Anything but money. It's no coincidence that many GAA heroes go into politics when they can't play any more.
But just as advertisers are pushing the parameters with football and hurling stars, the Parlon case suggests politicians are also now considered fair game. It's only a small step from animal feed endorsements to ministers interrupting speeches for swigs from branded sports drinks ("keeps top politicians talking 33 per cent longer - fact!"). And it's the backbenchers you'd really worry about.
Many backbenchers complain that their only roles in the Dáil are to provide lobby fodder and to form a human backdrop for televised sittings, occasionally breaking silence to shout "hear, hear!" or "your father was a Blueshirt!" but otherwise ignored.
In marketing terms, however, backbenchers could be prime advertising space. Maybe not prime, exactly. At the hour Oireachtas Report goes out, most TV stations are advertising adult chat lines for drunk people. But a TD's well-timed heckle could earn a slot on the Nine O'Clock News. And you can be sure advertisers are already trying to work out how to get their product logos into the picture. They'd start out discreetly, as with the GAA. But eventually, TDs would have slogans for worm drench across their chests.
The commercialisation of politics didn't start with calf feed, of course. Charlie Haughey's groundbreaking sponsorship deal with Ben Dunne is still a model for the advertising industry. If I recall correctly, Mr Haughey's defence was the opposite of Mr Parlon's. He said he only took the money - that he didn't necessarily believe in the product and wasn't promoting it. But hey, whatever works. The fact is, in the long term, Mr Dunne achieved huge publicity, with near 100 per cent name recognition among politics fans.
In the 1980s, several of Mr Haughey's colleagues even seem to have formed a kind of political players' association, aimed at securing a share of whatever profits the country was making from their efforts. Yet somehow politics has retained its non-commercial ethos. It's a tribute to the profession that until this week, if you heard the words "endorsement" and "TD" together, you'd automatically assume it was the result of a conviction for reckless driving.
Mr Parlon represents a constituency comprising what were formerly known as "King's County" and "Queen's County". And, coincidentally or not, in seeking to reward excellence in the cattle feed sector he is emulating the British monarchy's centuries-old practice of granting seals of approval to selected merchants. To this day, everything from rat catching to toilet roll manufacture may be honoured with the term "by royal appointment", based on little more than the fact that the queen has used the product or service satisfactorily over a number of years. No money changes hands there either: the honour can't be bought or sold.
Perhaps the Offaly-based agrifood company has redesigned its packaging with the message: "Official calf-nut suppliers to the Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works". Perhaps not. Either way, I don't think we want to go too far down that road.
Ireland is just so much smaller than Britain, and no matter how well intentioned the scheme was, it would end up being run on the basis of who you knew. You could be the best, say, beauty therapist in Ireland, to take an extreme example. But unless your beautifying was personally familiar to members of the Government, you'd have no chance of a royal appointment.
