Drapier An Insiders Guide To PoliticsMary Harney has had a bad week. Not an explosively disastrous week, just a relentlessly awful week, the sort of week that would drive you to drink, if you were so inclined, or drive you to look for another job, if only there was one on offer. Certainly the sort of week that would make you wonder why you opted for your current job in the first place.
It started much as usual: doctors threatening to strike; nurses demonstrating on the streets; patients lying on trolleys; Joe Duffy whipping up the masses into a tizzy of indignation about A&E. Then came the HSA report, suggesting that some of our hospitals are actually dangerous, and more hassle from the Labour types about foreign workers.
Add to the mix a bit of ritual silliness from Willie O'Dea, a clumsy Exocet from Michael Kelly in committee and a row with Pat Rabbitte on the Order of Business and you've got the makings of a pretty bad week. But, just as Mary was thinking that it couldn't get much worse, along comes her favourite person in the whole wide world with a barely disguised pre-emptive strike on the second terminal.
Mary likes her politics, which is just as well. She has put out more fires this week than your average Dublin fireman. But she must surely wonder, just the odd time, whether it isn't time to sling her hose.
Mary's favourite person, little Martin, thinks he's Minister for Transport (So, apparently, does little Ivor, but that's another day's work).
But, for some reason, nobody told the PDs.
For some reason best known to themselves, the PDs have an almighty bee in their collective bonnet when it comes to matters of transport, and even more particularly whenever there is the faintest whiff of airline fuel in the political air.
It's as if aviation policy has become one giant testing-ground for PD ideology.
Firstly, they insisted on breaking up Aer Rianta, something that Fianna Fáil would never have done on its own.
Drapier thinks there might be some merit in that one, but then again Drapier doesn't represent any place particularly close to Shannon.
Then they insisted on selling Aer Lingus. At first Bertie said Maybe. Later, during his socialist aggiornamento in the summer of 2004, he said No. More recently, Bertie has reverted to Maybe, and now Martin is busily preparing the silverware for sale. Once again a victory for PD ideology over FF common sense.
Drapier thinks the PDs are wrong about Aer Lingus, but there is an undeniable logic to their argument nonetheless.
On the other hand, Drapier is at a complete loss to identify any logic in the determination of the PDs to provide a privately operated terminal in Dublin airport which is meant to compete with the existing airport.
It's not difficult to see why Michael O'Leary wants his own terminal. Equally, you can see why some of the airlines might like to tout their business to competing terminals.
But it's very difficult to see how the average passenger will benefit from any of this. Lower fares? Lower shop prices? More comfort? Greater convenience? Hardly.
There were times when you could forget that Dick Spring was from Kerry. He spoke with an urbane Trinity drawl with an occasional tinge of mid-Americanism. But every now and then he would snap, usually without warning, and unleash an abrasive swathe of pure Kerry on some lesser being who had been unwise enough to cross him.
Likewise the bould Bertie. Most of the time Bertie mangles sentences in dulcet, barely audible tones designed to convey little and to offend nobody.
But just occasionally, and far too rarely for those of us who like a bit of craic, Bertie loses the head and the handlers' handbook and reverts to the sort of Dublin accent that would scare the wits out of any law-abiding citizen.
This week it was Micheál Martin who lost the head and lost the accent. Under persistent pressure from the ever-regal Liz McManus, cultivated Cork rapidly migrated back north of the Lee to lay bare that most rare of sights - a politician who is genuinely angry.
It is unusual in the extreme to see senior civil servants and ministers have a go at each other in public. This week's proximity spat between Michael Kelly and Micheál Martin was a classic, the two men coming perilously close to calling the other man a liar.
Speaking of which, Paul Kehoe got suspended this week after a row about Wexford hospital. Paul is the mild-mannered nice guy who coaxed Liam Twomey into Fine Gael a year ago. Could it be that he is already regretting his magnanimity?
Drapier was much struck by the deluge of comment, much of it critical, which followed the election of the Pope. It's not that long ago that the workings of the church grandees would have been accepted without question in Catholic Ireland.
Not so any more. Now it seems that even the machinations of the Holy Spirit are fair game for comment and criticism.
That said, Drapier was a little taken aback by the language used by Dermot Ahern in an interview given to RTÉ at the Vatican. Dermot was profuse in his acclamation of the new Pope and went on to describe Ireland as a Catholic country with a devotion to the papacy.
Like almost everyone else, Drapier will be happy to welcome the Pope to Ireland. But make no mistake: the Ireland of 1979 is dead and gone. It is, quite simply, history.