I have never quite understood how Willie Walsh managed to be the head of Aer Lingus and the Bishop of Killaloe simultaneously, writes Kevin Myers.
Perhaps it helps that his episcopal palace is so close to Shannon airport. At the drop of a mitre, he could whip on his leather flying-helmet and go helter-skeltering up to a board meeting at Dublin airport in the diocesan Lear jet. Nonetheless, such two-jobbing is extremely demanding, even for a sky-pilot as exalted as Willie. Sooner or later, I always felt that one or other had to give - and the other day, so it came to pass: the bishop triumphed.
In response to those allegations in the Dáil by the Taoiseach that Aer Lingus management - the beasts! - wanted to make themselves rich, Willie flung away the flying helmet, redonned the mitre, and intoned piously that making money was a venial sin, and possibly a mortaller, et saecula saeculorum, Amen.
If that's so, Willie should stick to bishoping full-time, and stop dabbling in the airline business. For good management is about making money - money for the shareholders and money for the boss, as Michael O'Leary has shown. Consider Mick's career.
Having won a Victoria Cross with the Irish Guards in 1915, he went on to succeed Brendan Corish as leader of the Labour Party. Tiring of politics, he became a Senior Counsel, before taking over a little flying-club called Ryanair, which had a single Sopwith Camel and a flapping scarf.
Michael O'Leary was greedy for success and money, and so devised a business plan which meant that the chap who sold you the ticket also made the sandwiches, flew the plane, and pedalled the engine. Thus he turned his flying club into the biggest airline in Europe. He had to face a lot of opposition, not least from Mary O'Rourke, who as minister wanted Ryanair to remain a flying club with a Camel and a scarf, and Aer Lingus to continue to be a pampered, protected, inefficient, lazy and incompetent state monopoly.
Willie, Your Grace: you remember that State monopoly, don't you? It was run for its employees, not to make money, and certainly not as a service for the people of Ireland. Yet you were the fellow who dropped your mitre and your chasuble, rolled up your sleeves, briefly bawled three Hail Marys and turned Aer Lingus into a serious airline. Your Grace, because of you, on the last two occasions I flew to England, I did so via Aer Lingus, for you were offering cheaper flights than Ryanair. I love Michael O'Leary VC SC TD deeply, but I am not a complete fool.
The next logical stage in your rescue of Aer Lingus - privatisation - is now being opposed by the Taoiseach, who last weekend (if rather late in life) became a socialist. This means that Red Bertie embraces economics which are based on piety rather than reality - which happily coincides with the fact that most Aer Lingus employees live in his constituency and, as trade union members, will probably vote in a bloc. Red Bertie would detest the notion of losing such a large body of votes, for his dream is to achieve a 98 per cent approval rating in his constituency, rather as that other socialist champion, Enver Hoxha, regularly did in his.
Which means that he wants to interfere in the affairs of the airline, just as Mary O'Rourke used to - as, indeed, has just about every other previous minister with responsibility for things-with-wings. It's what ministers do with a state-owned airline - which is why governments shouldn't be in the business of flying aeroplanes. Their priorities invariably conflict with those of the airline, as Red Bertie is showing with his own business plan for Aer Lingus. He prefers it to be a state-owned employment creator for his constituents rather than a commercial operation, flying people around and generating large cash flows and making its boss rich.
Of course, commercial operations are employment creators, aided by the twin disciplines of the need to generate profits and an answerability to shareholders. Hence Ryanair, and His Highness Maharajah Michael O'Leary, dripping with jewels and owning more planes than the US Air Force. But Willie, Your Grace, in your heart of hearts, you know that: and you were being just a little disingenuous when you said that you weren't in it for the money.
Your Grace, such disingenuousness ill becomes a man of the cloth, even if you were trying to head off trouble in the SIPTUland that is Aer Lingus. For the past three years you've been a brilliant airline chief; but apparently yearning for the mitre and alb, you've now resigned.
However, once back in the old palace, hearing the occasional reserved sin and performing all those confirmations, you'll soon realise that the only confirmation which you really yearn for is permission for take-off. Moreover, in your very first session of sacramentally cuffing children, you'll realise that these days the brats hit back, often enough with their foreheads, and sometimes with an axe; and then, once again, you'll hear the call of the air.
My money's on you starting another airline in Killaloe, and without you, the State airline will probably revert to what it was: Aer Lingers, the airline which gives you plenty of time to enjoy the facilities of that other state monopoly, Aer Rianta.
What will you call your
new airline? Perhaps, considering your past kindnesses to people with wheels on their houses, you could call it Travel-Air. Or better still, to reflect its Episcopal nature, Crozi-Air.