DURING the beef tribunal, Charles Haughey described Larry Goodman as an exemplar of rugged private enterprise. Being an exemplar of private enterprise is tiring work. You get a pain in your back from pulling yourself up by your boot straps. You get blisters on your heels from standing on your own two feet all the time. You strain your knees from the constant flexing of muscles in the effort of continually getting up off your backside and onto your bike in one deft manoeuvre.
So you need - and, God knows, deserve in a good rest. So while Charles Haughey was praising his heroic self reliance, Larry Goodman was staying in. Stephen's Hall Hotel ("Luxury apartment Suites ... City Centre Location ... Secure Underground Car Parking") in Leeson Street.
He was having his chauffeur park his car, presumably in the secure underground car park. He was watching television, presumably in a luxury apartment suite. He was getting his shirts washed by the hotel laundry. He was eating his dinner. He was sleeping the sleep of the just, as soundly as any man with so clear a conscience and so deeply fatigued by his efforts on behalf of the national interest possibly could.
And who had the honour of paying for these home comforts for a man whose small mansion in Co Louth was a gruelling 20 minute helicopter ride from Dublin? Why, yourself and myself.
As legal costs accountants - instructed by lawyers - have been explaining to the Taxing Master of the High Court this week, it is right and proper that the taxpayer should stump up £3,536 for Larry Goodman's well deserved rests in Stephen's Hall, for his place in the underground car park, the laundering of his shirts, his dinners, and even his television viewing.
The use of the television, by the way, is specifically included in the bills that Larry Goodman's lawyers have posted through the taxpayers' letter boxes, giving a whole new meaning to pay per view: I view, you pay.
NEVER mind that Larry Goodman gave evidence to the beef tribunal for only four days, while his hotel bill, at £70 per night, seems to cover at least 40 nights, even taking the dinners, the laundry, the car parking and the television into account. And never mind that we are also stumping up £161,361 to his public relations consultant to make sure that his breakfast in Stephen's Hall wasn't ruined by too much distressing misrepresentation of his motives in the gutter press. Isn't it the least that we can do to encourage rugged self reliance?
But not, unfortunately, the most. To prove that a rising tide really does lift all boats, the plain people of Ireland are also being asked by Larry Goodman to reward the relentless drive towards self reliance of many of his associates. Not only should we pay vast sums of money to his lawyers, for instance, but we should feed them as well.
Such was their reliance on the pittance they received from the State for appearing at the tribunal (insulting sums like £2,500 a day) that they apparently would have starved on days the tribunal was not sitting. How else can we explain the fact that the Goodman lawyers are demanding that the taxpayer pays for their meals on no fewer than 249 days when the tribunal was not sitting?
It would be churlish to complain about the £33,906 paid to Concept Catering for feeding these famished professionals. Larry Goodman's lawyers have told the High Court that the State is "getting a bargain and it is niggardly in the extreme" challenge the sum. It would, after all, barely keep a pensioner going for 10 years. The only question is whether it might have been better to put the contract out to tender.
I am sure Concept is a fine outfit, but there are other Irish companies who might have been willing to bid for the business. The Simon Community, I believe, has plenty of experience in the organisation of soup kitchens, and Concern has a good record of delivering food aid to the famine stricken.
But this is a minor criticism in the context of the sterling work done by these people in advancing the ideal of reward for effort against the petty" - resentments of the lower orders. While most of us dull little mediocrities are stupid enough to ask to be paid for doing a job - if we have one - these exemplars of enterprise have pioneered a new concept of remuneration you get paid for working and - then you get paid for working hard.
THUS, not alone did the Attorney General Dermot Gleeson get £2,500 a day for delivering final submissions to the tribunal, but he also received £75,000 for preparing them. Not alone did solicitors A. & L. Goodbody get £2.98 million for their work (the firm was unable to tell the Taxing Master what hourly rate this was based on - only the little people keep count) but they also claimed another £100,000, because this work was "complex and skilful" and a further £100,000 because it required "effort and responsibility."
Workers should think twice before they moan about these sums coming from their wages, and should follow where the pioneers have led The nurses, for instance, should stop whingeing to the Labour Court about pay differentials and career structures and simply put it to their employers: "That's my money for doing the job but where's my money for making an effort? And where's my payment for not being irresponsible?"
I was momentarily dismayed last week when I thought that Fianna Fail, the party that did so much to champion this kind of rugged private enterprise, was stooping to populist begrudgery. My eye was caught by the party's Ivor Callely ranting about "widespread abuse of taxpayers' funds" and "appalling waste".
He was getting very passionate about the State's softness, its willingness to featherbed lawbreakers and wrongdoers. Where, he asked, was the deterrent, when "so many services are provided for the offender at State expense?" He claimed that "offenders can get denim jackets, socks, shirts, bras, pullovers, individual physical education instruction, swimming, volleyball, daily issues of the Financial Times".
Confused by this reference to the Financial Times, I was about to write to Bertie Ahern asking, him to rein in this demagogic abuse of our rugged privateers. Then I realised, luckily, that Ivor Callely's outrage was directed at our prison system which, as anyone watching Donald Taylor Black's films on Mountjoy must realise, is riddled with an opulent excess well beyond even our most deserving entrepreneurs.
How could I have imagined that a Fianna Fail spokesman would think otherwise, even for a moment? What kind of State would we be if we were, prepared to give free bras and socks to evil wrong doers, while lawyers defending the good name of respectable citizens have to beg for their dinners? What kind of country would throw away so much money on luxuries for lawbreakers, when captains ,of industry not only have to avail of tax amnesties - but are forced to ask the State to pay for the roof over their heads? What will these offenders being looking for next - televisions?