Finally, some good has come of the foot-and-mouth crisis: the annual conference of the Irish Management Institute has been cancelled. I attended 14 of them, one worse than the other, in my days as a business journalist. The format might change slightly from year to year, but there was one constant: the spectacular preening of business egos.
One year, the IMI got both Tony O'Reilly and Michael Smurfit to speak. I remember nothing of what either said, but I recollect vividly the competition between their chauffeurs to get closest to the front door of the Great Southern Hotel.
We had a visit once from the former French President, Valery Giscard d'Estaing. He flew by private plane to Farranfore, where a car collected him. On its back window was a sign for a local garage, Kerry Motor Works. Giscard d'Estaing thought the last word in the sign was a verb, not a noun. He asked the driver if it was in any way unusual for a Kerry motor to work.
Gossip columnist
I think the late Terry O'Sullivan used that story in his Dubliner's Diary in the Evening Press. In the early days of the IMI conference, it was not unusual to have a gossip columnist such as Terry in attendance. The thinking was that business hacks are famously unable to make business interesting to ordinary folk, whereas Terry might possibly get through to them. I'm not sure if he did.
If there is one thing business journalists do better than any other, it is sniffing out good places to eat. Killarney in those days had no decent restaurants, but we quickly discovered the Aghadoe House Hotel and its dingingroom. Here we would repair for dinner on the Friday night and play games. These mainly entailed shredding the reputations of the businessmen - and they were mostly men - whose insights we were in Killarney to record.
One year we played a particularly dangerous game. Each journalist in turn was asked to nominate the worst business journalist in Ireland and to give reasons. A condition was that the nominee had to be present around the table. The blood-letting was savage as scores were settled. Colm Rapple nominated me. I returned the compliment.
The conference sessions were excruciating. Since it was business talking unto business, diversity of thought was rare, passion even less so. After one particularly dull conference, I suggested to Ivor Kenny, then the IMI's director-general, that next year he should invite a trade unionist, preferably a ferocious leftie, to enliven proceedings.
Matt Merrigan
Kenny took me up on this idea and the following year the ATGWU's Matt Merrigan was listed as a speaker. I arrived at Heuston Station to catch the IMI conference train to Killarney. I spotted Matt on the platform with his wife. He was carrying an elderly suitcase, bound with twine. Uh-huh, I thought, a fashion statement: Mattie was going to give the fat cats both barrels.
That night, the hacks and the speakers mingled over dinner. I found myself at a table with Ronnie Nesbitt, the chairman of Arnotts, his wife, and the Merrigans. Mrs Nesbitt made conversation with Mrs Merrigan. "Where are you from?" she asked. "Drimnagh", replied Mrs Merrigan in tones that indicated she wanted to be back there. "Drimnagh," mused Mrs Nesbitt, "Drimnagh, did some social work there once." I'm afraid the late Mattie did not set the conference alight, as I had hoped. He gave out about Richie Ryan's performance as Minister for Finance - a view shared by his audience, for different reasons.
I have been blamed for the failure of Guinness Light. What happened was that, prior to the launch, I met Mark Hely Hutchinson at the IMI conference. I asked him if he had tasted the new product.
Consternation
"Yes", he said. "And?" I said. "Ghastly", he said. This seemed to be a moderating interesting perspective from the managing director of Guinness Ireland, so I duly reported it. There was consternation in St James' Gate. I still feel Guinness Light was doomed without any help from me.
Some Puritans in the IMI once decreed that the conference should take place in Dublin rather than in its traditional home of Killarney. This was a monumental mistake. Attendance was well down. The Puritans had not realised that an essential part of the IMI conference for the captains of industry was the Friday afternoon round of golf, not to mention the very competitive snooker in the evening.